Welcome to the Neighborhood
by Science3927
Summary: Buffy and Dawn have just moved, and Buffy's already made an enemy: her jerk of a next-door neighbor, Spike. Can Dawn's unlikely friendship with Spike soothe the tension between the adults-and possibly turn it into something  much  more pleasant?
1. Chapter 1

Spike was dragged out of sleep by the buzzing of his alarm clock. He rolled over in bed, glared at the clock that read 8:57, and yanked the thing off the table. He threw it across the room and immediately fell back asleep.

What seemed like only minutes later, he was roused again by the sound of slamming car doors and the clamor of voices coming from right below his bedroom window. A few choice curse words fell from his lips as he reached over to slam his window shut. With the sounds muffled, he pulled the covers over his head and tried to get some more sleep.

That plan was working just fine until he heard the peal of the doorbell echoing through the house. "Bloody hell," he muttered. He decided to ignore it.

The doorbell rang again, followed by what sounded like an elephant banging on his door with a battering ram. He threw his blankets off in a temper. He yanked on the jeans he'd discarded next to the bed not even two hours ago and stomped, barefoot and bare-chested, down the stairs.

"What?" he said by way of greeting as he yanked the door open. There was no elephant, no battering ram, just a pretty and petite-and extremely pissed-off-blonde standing on his doorstep. He eyed her up, from her dainty little sandal-clad toes and long bare legs to the extra-short shorts and skimpy tank top clinging to her pert breasts. When his gaze reached her face, he took in the scowling hazel eyes and smiled, leaning casually against the door frame. "Well, hello, cutie." He ran one hand down his chest, hooking a thumb in the waistband of his jeans, and smirked as her eyes followed the movement. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

The blonde shook her head and tore her eyes away from his torso. "Are you-Spike?" she asked. She pronounced his name as if it would bite her if she weren't careful. She fixed her eyes on a spot safely away from his bare chest and folded her arms beneath her breasts.

Spike grinned at her obvious discomfort. "At your service," he said. "Now, wanna tell me why you dragged me out of bed so early in the morning? Not that I'm complainin', mind you." He let his eyes prowl over her figure again, ignoring the angry flush that colored her cheeks.

"It's almost ten o'clock! Mr. Giles told me you would meet me at the house at nine thirty to let me in."

A dim memory of Rupert's phone call the night before surfaced. "Right. You must be-" He searched his brain. "-Bitsy? Bunny?" Yeah, that sounded right.

"Buffy," she said tightly.

"Well, knew it was something silly."

"Yes. And 'Spike' is a real grown-up's name. Where's your dog collar?"

He grinned. Rupes had told him the girl who'd be over this morning was 'a nice young lady.' Hadn't mentioned anything about her being a feisty little thing. "Ooh, kinky. 'S upstairs, I'll just go fetch it if you'll be patient a minute."

"Ugh! You are- Look, I've got a gang of people waiting to help me move in and a truck that needs to be returned in four hours if I don't want to pay for another day. Which I don't. All I need is the key, and I'll be out of your hair. Because, wow, that's the last place I'd want to be. What do you call that look anyway? Peroxide Panic?"

Spike ran a hand over his head. He stifled a grimace when he felt the soft mess of curls sticking up all over the place. "Yeah, like you're not a walking advertisement for Miss Clairol," he said. "I'm willing to bet the carpet doesn't match the drapes." Spike ignored the girl's offended gasp and turned to rummage amongst the clutter strewn across the table next to the front door. "Know I got it here somewhere," he said when he heard her tapping a foot impatiently. "Ah-ha!" He located the keyring and faced his visitor with a triumphant grin.

She didn't look suitably impressed-merely held out an expectant hand-so he dangled the keys just out of her grasp. "What's the magic word, princess?" he asked with a grin. The grin fell off his face in a hurry, and his breath rushed out of him with an 'oof,' when she planted her fist in his ribs. His arm dropped, and she snatched the keyring from him and flounced away from his house.

"Welcome to the neighborhood, kitten!" he called to her retreating-and shapely-back end. She didn't look back, just waved briefly at him over her shoulder. Well, it would have been a wave if she'd used more than one finger. Spike grinned again and rubbed the sore spot on his side. _Little spitfire_, he thought. He wasn't sure why he'd been so rude to the girl other than the fact that he was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a morning person. He shrugged, closed the door, and cracked his jaw in a giant yawn as he headed back to bed.

* * *

><p>Buffy was fuming when she returned to the U-Haul and her gathered friends. "What a jerk!" she said. She unlocked the front door. "First he doesn't show up when he's supposed to, and then he's all, all rude and leer-y!"<p>

Xander opened his mouth, but Buffy didn't notice. She just kept rolling. "Spike! What the hell kind of name is that for a grown man? And he's got the nerve to call my name silly?"

"Well, 'Buffy,' not exactly one of the classics, you know," Willow said as she climbed the front steps into the house, a large box in her arms. "Um, but yeah, he shouldn't have said that," she amended. Her cheeks reddened under Buffy's death-glare."Where do you want this?" she asked, nodding her head at the box in her arms. It was clearly marked 'Kitchen.'

"Gee, Will, how about the kitchen with that one?" Buffy said sarcastically.

Willow and Xander exchanged a look, which Buffy intercepted. She closed her eyes and sighed. "Oh, Willow, I'm so sorry. You know I didn't mean that. You guys shouldn't have to deal with me being all grumpy-girl. It's just-"

"Yeah, we know, Buff," Xander said. He put an arm around her shoulder and gave her a squeeze. "It's hard."

Buffy smiled at him. "Thank you for putting up with me." She glanced over her shoulder to see Tara and Anya-Willow and Xander's significant others-watching her warily. "Thanks, you guys. I know I've been kind of-"

"A bitch?" Anya said. She easily absorbed the glares that Willow and Buffy sent her way; Xander shook his head. "What? You have been very difficult, Buffy."

"Ahn, c'mon," Xander said. "Sorry," he mumbled to Buffy before pulling his girlfriend back to the truck and loading her up with boxes.

"I was going to say 'cranky'," Buffy said to Willow.

"I agree with Anya."

Buffy turned to look at her little sister, who was standing on the sidewalk in front of the house. She had her arms folded tightly across her chest and a sullen expression on her face. "Gee, thanks, Dawn," Buffy said. "Wanna go inside and check out the bedrooms? I'll let you have first pick."

"Whatever." Dawn stomped up the stairs and pushed past Willow and Buffy into the living room. It was a moderately sized room and featured a large picture window and a fireplace. Dawn looked around skeptically. "It's kind of small," she said.

Buffy looked around the room. Dawn was right-especially compared to their mom's house on Revello Drive, this house was tiny. For the two of them, though, there was plenty of room, and she couldn't argue with the price. She thanked her lucky stars for Mr. Giles. He'd done business with her mom, and Buffy had met him a few times at the gallery before Joyce had gotten sick. After her mother's death, he had approached her about purchasing the gallery, and even put her in contact with someone who had eventually put in an offer on the house. When Buffy had told him they would be moving into an apartment after the sale of the house, he'd insisted that they take the vacant rental property he owned instead. Buffy knew the rent she was paying wasn't anywhere near what he could actually get for the house; that was one reason she'd taken the place sight unseen.

"Well, yeah, but-" Buffy started to defend her choices, but Dawn brushed by her into the kitchen. Buffy followed her. They stood next to each other as Dawn looked around the room. There was a dining area on one side of the room, and a galley-style kitchen on the other. A sliding glass door led to a screen porch beyond the dining area. "Look, we've got a dishwasher," Buffy said. She smiled at Dawn, who merely rolled her eyes in response before turning on her heel and walking away.

Buffy sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. She could feel a monster headache coming on. She wondered briefly if she had made her mother feel like this when they'd first moved to Sunnydale. "Payback's a bitch," she said to herself. She blinked away tears-her instinctual response to thoughts of her mother-and headed for the second floor in search of Dawn.

"I want this room," Dawn said when Buffy caught up with her. Buffy looked around the room. It was spacious and had two long closets lining one wall. One of the three windows included a window seat. A large oak tree spread its limbs outside that window. She could see why Dawn liked the room. Buffy was tempted, for just a moment, to argue with Dawn about her bedroom choice. Then she thought of Dawn's face at their mother's funeral and the way her little sister had drifted through their house like a silent ghost for the past month. Buffy forced a smile onto her face.

"All right." Buffy took a deep breath and tried to broach the subject of _why_this move was the right thing to do. "Dawnie, I know this isn't easy, but I really think this is the best choice for us."

"Yeah, I'm sure you do," Dawn said. "I'm going to go help with the boxes." She didn't spare a glance at Buffy as she left the room.

Buffy sighed again. She should be used to Dawn's attitude, but it still hurt. Up until a few months ago, they'd been getting along fine. Of course, it had helped that Buffy had been living in the dorms at UC Sunnydale for three years; that had left Dawn free range of their mother, the house, and all the clothing Buffy had left behind in her closet. Then their mother had gotten sick, and everything had changed.

Buffy stopped that line of thought in its tracks and moved down the hall to investigate the other bedroom. It was half the size of the first one and offered only one small closet and two windows; one overlooked the street while the other afforded a direct line of sight into her obnoxious English neighbor's house. His bedroom, from the looks of things. Buffy was drawn to the window; her head tilted to one side as she took in the lean body lying on the king-sized bed plainly visible from her vantage point. She pictured again his hand sliding down his muscular chest, past the pierced left nipple and over his well-defined abs. And that sharp vee his hips made on either side of the thin line of hair below his navel- Buffy blinked the image away. _He's a jerk!_ she reminded herself sternly. _We do not ogle jerks._

He rolled over as she watched him, and the covers slipped down past his hips. Buffy gulped when it became apparent that her new neighbor slept in the nude. As if the nuclear shade of his bleached hair hadn't been the tip off, there was the proof positive that he wasn't a natural blond. Her skin suddenly felt too tight. She felt a rush of relief that Dawn hadn't picked this room, because _there_was a view her fourteen year old sister so did not need. That thought was immediately followed by a little voice in her head-it sounded eerily like Anya-that said having a tiny room with a really nice view was not such a tough sacrifice.

Footsteps clattering up the stairs, accompanied by the sound of Dawn's voice, brought Buffy back to herself. She jumped, then quickly yanked the blinds closed. Not that she'd been doing anything that needed hiding. Nope. She was just-saving her friends from an unexpected peep show. That was it. She was conscientious girl, saving Xander from the need for brain bleach.

Buffy turned away from the window just as Xander and Anya entered her room with a load of boxes. "This is a very cozy house," Anya said. She dropped the two boxes she was carrying. Buffy winced when she heard something crack and rattle inside one of the boxes. "I hope you have room for all of your things. The things you haven't had to sell, I mean."

"It's cute," Xander said, giving his girlfriend the Look, followed by an apologetic shrug for Buffy's sake once Anya left the room.

"It's cheap. That's pretty much its biggest appeal." Buffy opened the closet and peered inside. Anya wasn't kidding about the cozy part; she wondered how much persuading she'd have to do to store some of her things in Dawn's closet. Probably pay rent to the brat. "And it's in a decent neighborhood, so hopefully I don't have to worry about Dawn when she's home alone."

She closed the closet door and leaned on it wearily. Sheer exhaustion seeped through every pore, every cell. "Dawn hates me," she said softly, meeting Xander's warm brown eyes.

"That's not true," he said. He came and stood next to her, his shoulder butting up against hers. "She's a little out-of-sorts, yeah, but she'll get over it. And hey, you let her have the big room, so you'll be back on her favorite sister list in no time."

Buffy shook her head. "Ever since Mom-" She swallowed back a sob. "Ever since Mom got sick, she's been like this. Like everything's my fault, you know?"

"C'mon, Buff, she's sad, that's all. Everyone deals with grief differently. Give her some time. She'll be back to annoying you in that special little sister way before you know it." He nudged her with his elbow. "Now, I know you brought me along for all my manly muscles, but you need to help unload the truck, too. And then give me lots and lots of beer."

Buffy groaned. "Can't I just supervise?" She and Xander laughed and chatted easily as they headed for the waiting truck. And Buffy banished all thoughts of her annoying, peroxided, _body of a freaking Greek god_ neighbor from her mind.


	2. Chapter 2

Spike stepped out onto his back porch following his morning-well, okay, afternoon-shower. He lit up a cigarette and settled down in a lawn chair to enjoy his first hit of nicotine.

"Those things'll kill you, you know," a voice said.

He looked around to see a skinny little girl, all hair and eyes and gangly limbs, straddling the redwood plank fence that separated his yard from his new neighbor's. For just a second, the similarities-the long brown hair and big blue eyes-were so striking that he might have mistaken her for ... The moment passed. "Yeah, that's what I hear," Spike said, taking a long drag and blowing a smoke ring in her direction.

The girl waved her hand delicately in front of her face as the smoke wafted past her. She scrunched up her nose, but gave him a bright smile nonetheless. "You must be Spike," she said cheerily.

"That I am. And who might you be, little bit?"

"I'm Dawn. And I'm not little. I'm fourteen."

Spike smothered a laugh. "My mistake, Dawn." He dropped his half-smoked cigarette into the neck of the empty beer bottle he used as an ashtray. "So, you my new neighbor, too, or are you just helping Bunny move in?"

Dawn laughed heartily at that. "Her name's Buffy. But if you really wanna call her Bunny, that's okay, too. It'll completely piss her off. And yeah, I'm gonna be living here."

Spike decided he liked this girl. She was just as sassy as that blonde bint, but without the bitchy attitude. He was pretty sure this little bit of a thing wasn't going to slug him anytime soon, either. "Well, are you goin' to introduce yourself properly, then?" He watched her with a slight grin as she bit her lip and looked over her shoulder at her house.

"Not supposed to talk to strangers," she said after a moment.

His grin widened. "Already been talking to me. 'Sides, we're neighbors. How long you think we're gonna stay strangers, living right next door to each other?"

Dawn shrugged carelessly and swung her other leg onto his side of the fence before jumping lightly to the ground. She sauntered up to his porch and took a seat on an empty chair. "Hello, I'm Dawn Summers," she said, very politely and formally. She held out a hand for him to shake.

He took it and gave it a firm shake. "Spike Williams," he said.

"Very nice to meet you," she said, maintaining her stiff and formal act. Then she smiled and flopped back in her chair, long limbs splayed out around her. "No matter what Buffy says," she added, a little venom creeping into her tone.

He snorted. "She your sister?"

Dawn nodded, her face very glum. "Yeah. Lucky me."

"Is she giving you a hard time or what?" He considered having another cigarette, but decided against it. Fresh young lungs sitting right there and all.

"She thinks she's the boss of me, is all. And she made me move here."

"Oi! 'S a nice neighborhood, I'll have you know. Plus, you get me for a neighbor. That's gotta be some kinda bonus, yeah?"

Dawn grinned at him. "Yeah, I think it is. You totally managed to get Buffy in a snit. Not that that takes much-she's kind of in ready-to-snit mode these days."

"What brings you birds to my neck of the woods, if it's such a hardship?"

Dawn's face darkened. "Um, my- our mom-" She looked away from him and swallowed hard. "You know what? I don't really wanna talk about it," she said, keeping her eyes averted.

"Oh, hey, that's okay," Spike said. He could have kicked himself; Rupes had mentioned that the girls moving in next door had lost their mum unexpectedly. He hadn't remembered, though, not til just now. "Didn't mean to-"

"Dawnie?" a voice called from the other side of the fence. Dawn sat up very straight, and Spike turned his eyes on the blonde entering his yard. It wasn't Dawn's sister. This girl was taller, lush and curvy with a wide, generous mouth and sympathetic eyes. "Dawnie, there you are," she said when she spotted the teenager. "We've been looking for you!"

Dawn stood up. "I didn't run away or anything," she said. "I was looking around the backyard, and then I came over to meet my new neighbor. This is Spike. Spike, this is Tara."

Spike stood as well and held a hand out to the woman. "Hello, pet," he said. "Lovely to meet you." He gave her a warm smile as she shook his hand. She blushed under his gaze and pulled her hand away.

"N-nice to meet you, t-too. I hope Dawn wasn't bothering you."

Spike waved Tara's concern away. "'Course not. We were just making our acquaintances."

"Oh, good. Um, Dawn, do you want to come back to the house now? Buffy and Xander will be back soon, and we're going to order pizza."

Dawn shrugged her shoulders and sat down on the chair she had just vacated. "Not really hungry."

Spike glanced between the two girls, taking in Dawn's sullen expression and Tara's concerned one. "Hey, Dawn," he said. "I'm busy today, and I bet you are, too. But you can come visit anytime, yeah?" He regretted his spontaneous invitation almost immediately. Just because he felt for the poor girl didn't mean he wanted her hanging 'round all the time. Then Dawn smiled, and it was like watching the sun rise. He found himself thinking her name suited her perfectly. She lost that haunted air and the shadows that had filled her eyes were banished. Spike couldn't help but smile back at her. She was a sweet kid; maybe it ran in the family and the sister would turn out to be not so bad after all.

"Oh, thanks, Spike," Dawn said, still all smiles.

Spike escorted Tara and Dawn out of his yard. A red-haired woman emerged from the house just as they crossed the driveway that separated the two properties. _House is like a bleedin' clown car_, Spike thought. _Only it keeps spitting out lovely women 'stead of goons in scary make-up._He grinned. Having the Summers girls next door might actually turn out to be a good thing.

"Dawnie," the redhead called. "Where've you been?"

Dawn rolled her eyes. "God, you guys, you know I'm not a baby, right? I'm not going to like, choke on my saliva or something stupid if you're not watching me all the time."

"We just worry about you, sweetie." The redhead wrapped her arms around Tara's waist. Spike ran an appreciative eye over both women as they snuggled into each other briefly. "Hi, I'm Willow," she said, catching Spike's glance.

He nodded. "Spike," he said, trying not to choke on his tongue. _Lesbians!_He must have died and gone to heaven. Maybe he was still tucked up in his bed. If the whipped cream-or hell, just the whips-came out next, he'd know he was dreaming.

"Duck and cover," Dawn said suddenly. She was looking down the block. "Looks like Xander let Buffy drive."

Spike furrowed his brow at that statement, then saw the black Land Rover careening down the street. It swerved wildly into the driveway. He caught his breath when it looked like it would take out the back bumper of his car. His painstakingly restored 1959 DeSoto Fireflite survived disaster by the barest inch as the Land Rover barreled toward the group standing in the yard. Spike grabbed Dawn's arm and pulled her out of the vehicle's path. The SUV screeched to a halt. The front bumper was a hairsbreadth from the corner of the house. A dark-haired, broad-shouldered man vaulted out of the passenger seat, his face pale.

"Great googily-moogily, Buffy!" he said as the blonde exited the vehicle. "Did you get your license from a Cracker Jack box?"

Buffy ignored the man-Xander, Spike assumed-and rounded the SUV to stand in front of Spike and Dawn. "Would you mind getting your hands off my _baby sister_?" she spat at him without actually looking in his direction.

Spike dropped Dawn's arm and held his hands up in a pacifying gesture. "Sorry, just thought she'd look better not flattened under your wheels." _You maniac,_he thought, but-just barely-managed not to say aloud.

Buffy's gaze was focused on her sister. "Go inside, Dawn," she said.

"You suck," Dawn said, returning Buffy's glare with interest. She turned to Spike and smiled sweetly, laying a hand on his arm. "It was very, _very_nice to meet you," she practically purred. "I'm sure living next door to you is going to be lots of fun." With nary a glance in her sister's direction, she pranced away into the house, switching her hips from side to side.

Once Dawn was out of sight, Buffy's eyes moved to Spike. He backed away from the fury written across her face. "Look-" He got no further than that one word before Buffy pushed past him into the house.

Tara and Willow exchanged a look that spoke volumes, while Xander stood next to the Land Rover, still looking pale and shaken. "Buffy's not usually like that," Willow said. "She's been really, um, stressed lately."

"Yeah," Tara said. "She's very sweet when she's not-"

"Being a bloody unbearable wench?"

"I'd go with bitch. I think she's getting used to that." Spike turned to look at the brunette who had just emerged from the house. The attractive-females-to-Spike ratio just kept climbing. Better and better. "She'll have to get used to it, at least, because from the sounds of it, that's what Dawn will be calling her from now on."

Spike shook his head. "Maybe I'll have to teach the little bit some more interesting names, yeah?"

The brunette laughed. "Oh, yes, that would be good. Give Buffy more reasons to dislike you. I'm Anya, by the way."

"Spike." He smiled thinly, feeling a headache coming on. "Right, well, it's been lovely meeting all of you. I can tell living next door to _Buffy_," he imbued her name with as much sarcasm as he could pack in, "is going to be a right treat." He headed for the back yard; he definitely needed a few more smokes before he could concentrate on work.

* * *

><p>Buffy knocked on Dawn's bedroom door. "Do you want to come down and have some pizza with us? Xander hooked up the TV and DVD player. You can pick the movie," she cajoled.<p>

"Go. Away." Dawn's voice was low and growly. Better than her super-sonic screams; she'd exhausted those fairly quickly.

Buffy pushed the door open and stepped in. "Dawnie, come on-"

Dawn sat up on her bed and threw a pillow at her sister. "Get out of my room."

Buffy ignored the command and instead sat down next to Dawn. "I'm sorry, Dawn," she said. She was weary; every last bit of her felt about ninety years old, and it showed in her voice. "I'm sorry we had to move to this crappy little house, okay? But you're going to the same school, and you can have your friends over to visit. This isn't the end of the world."

"Whatever." Dawn folded her arms across her chest and turned her face away from Buffy. "You know what? I'm _thrilled _that we moved here. I'm absolutely ecstatic, okay? Now get. Out. Of my. Room."

Buffy stared at Dawn's profile for one long, silent moment. Then she stood up and without another word walked out of her sister's room. The door closed quietly behind her.


	3. Chapter 3

Dawn woke to a dark room and a growling stomach. She had a vague memory of Tara coming into her room to say goodbye. She liked Tara; why couldn't _she _be her sister instead of stupid Buffy? Of course, if Tara was her older sister, maybe she'd be cranky and bossy and mean, too. But Dawn doubted it. She'd never seen Tara be anything other than totally sweet to everyone she knew. Even the really annoying people, like Buffy and Anya.

Dawn climbed out of bed and promptly tripped over the boxes she'd left next to it. She held her breath for a moment, hoping she hadn't woken Buffy. She really didn't want to talk to _her _right now. After a few seconds, when the house remained silent, she moved slowly toward the door. Buffy had left the bathroom light on. Dawn rolled her eyes. Buffy still thought she was a baby, thought she'd need a nightlight if she woke up in the middle of the night.

Dawn skipped lightly down the stairs. Open boxes were scattered around the living room. A picture of her mom had been placed in the very center of the mantle piece. Dawn stopped in front of the fireplace and stared at the photo. "I miss you, Mommy," she whispered. She trailed a finger across her mother's face and thought about the last time she'd seen her. Then she wished she hadn't thought about that, wished that she could _stop _thinking about that.

She wiped away the tears that came unbidden and headed for the kitchen. More boxes, piles and piles of them. Dawn wondered if they actually had room to put all these things. Stupid house. She missed their old kitchen already, missed the big island counter where she'd sit and do her homework every afternoon while her mom prepared supper. Buffy didn't cook, not the way Mom had. Dawn tried to remember the last home-cooked meal she'd had. Probably during the few days Willow and Tara stayed with them after the funeral. Tara liked to make big breakfasts-pancakes and fresh fruit, not just cold cereal-and suppers with all four food groups represented.

Dawn opened the refrigerator. It held a carton of milk, a few apples, some yogurt, a handful of beers, and two large pizza boxes. She pulled both boxes out and examined the leftovers. Pepperoni, sausage and mushroom on one, anchovies and pineapple on the other. One thing she'd say for Buffy, she had good taste in pizza toppings. She rummaged through the cupboards until she found the dishes, and piled her plate with the last four slices of the anchovy pizza. After a moment's consideration, she pulled a beer out as well and twisted the cap off.

She wandered back into the living room and curled up in a corner of the couch. The pizza was cold and greasy and delicious. Dawn took a tentative sip of the beer and scrunched up her nose at the foamy, yeasty flavor. Kind of gross, really, which was exactly what she remembered from the sips her dad had given her off his beers when she was little. She shrugged, held her breath, and chugged half the bottle down.

Dawn spied the remote control on the coffee table and flipped on the TV. Nothing but snow on all the channels. That was when she remembered that they didn't have cable, and they weren't going to be getting cable. "Lame," Dawn muttered. She tipped up the beer bottle and swallowed the rest of it. Then she went into the kitchen and retrieved another beer. When she came back to the living room, she turned on the DVD player and chose "A Knight's Tale" from the small pile of rentals next to the TV. Heath Ledger was so cute.

Dawn was engrossed in the movie, having made it to the scene where Will and his men first met Chaucer-one of her favorite parts of the story-when she heard a thud from upstairs. She hurriedly crammed her half-empty beer bottle down between the arm of the couch and the cushions, and took a bite of pizza to cover the smell of beer on her breath.

The hallway light came on, and Buffy's voice drifted down the stairs. "Dawnie? Is that you?"

Dawn rolled her eyes. "No, it's the ghost of Christmas past," she said. "Duh, who'd you think it was?"

Buffy sighed as she came down the stairs. It was her 'I can't believe I have to put up with this' sigh. Dawn was intimately familiar with it, having heard it at least a hundred times a day over the past couple months. "What are you doing?" Buffy asked once she was standing in the living room. Dawn smothered a grin at the sight of her sister with her hair a ratty mess and a livid red pillow crease marring one cheek.

Dawn looked from Buffy to the TV and back. "I'm knitting a sweater," she replied.

There was that sigh again. Dawn turned her eyes back to the television, ignoring Buffy with all the energy she could summon.

Buffy stood next to the couch for a minute, sighed again-_Because how would I know she was mad if she doesn't go around breathing heavily?_ Dawn thought-and turned to go back upstairs. "Don't stay up too late," she said. "We've got a lot of work to do around the house in the morning."

"Whatever," Dawn said. As soon as she heard Buffy's door close, she pulled the beer out from its hiding spot and swallowed what was left in the bottle. Her head ached a bit.

When she stood up to put her dishes in the kitchen, she felt dizzy and a little tired. She giggled quietly when she tripped over her own feet on the way to the kitchen. "Oh, no, I'm drunk!" she said with another giggle and a hiccup.

Dawn dropped her plate in the sink, pitched the empty bottle into the recycling bin, and headed back to her bed. She laid down and pulled the covers over her head and, to her relief, fell into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

><p>"Dawn," Buffy called as she knocked softly on her sister's door. She waited a moment before knocking again. She knew it was stupid, being so wary of one skinny little fourteen year old, but the last thing Buffy wanted was a repeat of yesterday's hysterics. There were only so many times she could take being called a bitch before she'd give in to the urge to slap that snotty expression right off Dawn's face.<p>

Buffy sighed. She really wasn't a violent person, sister-slapping impulses and the way she'd punched the guy next door notwithstanding. Buffy flushed when she thought about her introduction to her new neighbor. Again. She wasn't entirely sure it if was the out-of-character hitting or the half-nakedness that was making it so hard for her to forget about the incident. Hmm, maybe it had a little more to do with the full-on nakedness she'd witnessed later that day-

Buffy shook her head, willing those thoughts away, and rapped sharply on Dawn's door. "Dawn, wake up!" She opened the door and came face to face with her sister.

"What?"

"Morning, sunshine," Buffy said with forced cheerfulness. "You planning on rolling out of bed and giving me a hand some time today?"

Dawn pushed past Buffy without a word and stomped down the stairs. Buffy followed her more slowly, and the two settled into a rhythm of unpacking boxes. They worked in silence for a time, until Dawn finally spoke.

"Where's Kokopelli?" She looked up from the box she'd just emptied. "I've been through all the boxes marked 'art,' I think, and I can't find him."

Buffy glanced at Dawn. It was obvious from the look on Dawn's face that this was about more than just a misplaced knick-knack. "I ... I sold it. Mr. Giles looked through what we had at the house, and he took the things he thought would sell in the gallery."

Dawn's eyes filled with tears. "But I loved him! And he was Mom's. How could you get rid of him? Without even asking me?" She stood abruptly. Her hands shook. "God, you just really don't care about either of us, do you?"

Buffy stood as well. Her hands curled into fists as rage suffused her. Dawn had no idea-none whatsoever-what Buffy had been facing since their mother died. Everything she had done in the past six months had been for their mother and for Dawn; to be accused of not caring stung more than Buffy could express. She hadn't explicitly told Dawn all the reasons they'd had to move-she didn't think a fourteen year old should worry about finances-but she'd thought Dawn had some idea of _why_ the changes in their lives were necessary.

"Dawn," she said finally through clenched teeth, "I'm sorry I didn't check with you on every little thing. I'm trying to make sure we've got money to eat and pay our bills and maybe even have a little bit of savings when you go to college, okay?" _At least you get to __**go**_ _to college_, Buffy thought. She restrained herself from saying anything else right then-she knew whatever came out of her mouth would just sound bitter and selfish.

"Whatever! All I am is a duty to you, right? A mess you have to take care of, just like Mom was."

Buffy surprised both herself and her sister by slapping Dawn across the face. There was a ringing silence in the room. Dawn pressed a hand to the quickly-reddening hand print on her cheek, tears welling up in her eyes.

Buffy took a step toward Dawn. "Dawnie," she said softly. "I'm so sorry- I didn't mean to-" The younger girl didn't respond, but turned and bolted out the front door before Buffy could close the distance between them. By the time she stepped outside, Dawn was nowhere to be seen.

Buffy leaned against the door frame. She was torn between wanting to scour the neighborhood for Dawn-and then tying her down so Buffy could apologize-and being too angry at Dawn's cruel words to truly mean an apology at the moment. After deliberating for a minute, she went back inside. Dawn couldn't have gone too far, not barefoot and still in her pajamas, and she'd come back on her own. Probably as soon as she remembered she hadn't eaten yet today.

Dawn still hadn't reappeared more than an hour later. Buffy refused to worry about her, instead concentrating on her to-do list. She made one final check of the kitchen cupboards and moved on to the next item on her list-grocery shopping. Even if Dawn's stomach encouraged her to come home, Buffy reasoned, the lack of edibles would only send her right back out the door.

Buffy scribbled a quick note and affixed it to the refrigerator. Knowing Dawn, that would be the first place she would look when she finally returned. Before leaving the house, Buffy added one more task to her to-do list. It was a small gesture; she only hoped it would be enough to start her and Dawn on the road to repairing their relationship.


	4. Chapter 4

Spike ambled down the stairs around eleven o'clock. He wasn't usually up this early, but he'd managed last night to break through the writer's block he'd been struggling with for the past week. He'd celebrated that fact with a few more beers than were strictly necessary-which had left him with an aching head this morning-and then decided for a change to call it a night _before_sunrise.

Spike paused in the foyer to rummage through the pockets of his leather duster for the pack of cigarettes he knew was in there. His fingers closed on the crumpled pack and his silver lighter, and he sighed with relief. He made another stop in the kitchen for something to drink. He considered having a beer-a little hair of the dog couldn't hurt-but then settled for a glass of ice water and two aspirin before stepping out onto the deck for his morning smoke.

Spike stopped just outside the door, surprised by the huddled figure curled up in one of the deck chairs. Dawn glanced at him from behind a curtain of tangled brown hair as he took a seat next to her and lit a cigarette.

"Morning, little bit," Spike said. "How's it going?"

Dawn sat up straighter and wiped at her tear-stained face with a pajama sleeve. A red mark in the distinctive shape of a hand stood out on her flushed cheek. "I had a fight with Buffy," she said. "And ... and you said I could come visit whenever I wanted, so-"

Spike chuckled, and a tentative smile replaced the wary expression on Dawn's face. "That I did," he said. "Though most people knock when they come to visit."

Dawn shrugged. "I didn't want to bother you," she said, almost shyly. "I just needed to get out of the house, and I don't really have anywhere else to go. All my friends live on the other side of town."

"No bother." The two sat in a companionable silence until Dawn's stomach rumbled. Loudly. Spike stubbed out his cigarette and considered what he should do. Clearly she wasn't eager to go back home, and he didn't feel inclined to force her to leave. If the blonde next door was the type to work out her frustrations with fists rather than words, well, he didn't mind so much when it came him. The way she'd slugged him yesterday had gotten his motor revving, if he were being perfectly honest. For her to be hitting a little girl, on the other hand- "C'mon, little bit. How about I make you some breakfast?" he offered as he stood up.

Dawn turned beet red. "Oh, no! I mean ... you don't have to do that."

"Going to be making something for myself anyway," Spike said. "It's no trouble to feed one more person."

At that, Dawn bounded to her feet and happily followed him into the house. She sat on the counter next to the sink, bare feet thumping against the cupboards, while Spike mixed up a batch of pancakes and set some bacon to cooking. She poured out a litany of complaints about her older sister, which Spike reminded himself to take with a grain of salt. He might be of the opinion that his new neighbor was a bleeding menace-and the palm print on Dawn's face didn't exactly convince him otherwise-but he had a little experience with teenage girls and their tendency toward melodrama.

"So, no cable TV, huh?" Spike said with a sly grin, having ascertained what Dawn perceived as her sister's most heinous crime. He was inwardly relieved; he thought if Buffy was smacking her sister around regularly, Dawn might find something more to complain about than her entertainment options. "That's just cruel." He loaded up a plate with pancakes, another with bacon, and set them on the table. He gathered dishes and silverware for both of them, and the two sat down to their breakfast.

Dawn stuck out her lower lip at his mild teasing, even as she piled her plate with a teetering stack of pancakes. "It's totally cruel!" she insisted. "There's a _True Blood_marathon on next weekend. I wanted to catch up on last season before the new one starts."

"Sounds dire." Spike poured maple syrup over his pancakes and passed the bottle to Dawn. "Still, if not subscribing to cable is the worst thing to happen to you, I think you'll survive."

Dawn's fork dropped to the table with a clatter, and she looked down at her plate. Her hair fell around her face. "My mom died last month," she said softly.

Spike instinctively reached for her hand but stopped himself before actually making contact. "Sorry to hear that."

Dawn shrugged. "I thought- After my parents got divorced, it was just the three of us, you know? Me and Mom and Buffy. We used to do everything together. But then Mom got sick and- and after she died, Buffy knew all this stuff about what Mom wanted for her funeral." She looked up at him with anguished blue eyes. "She knew! She knew Mom might die, and she never told me. They both- they talked about it, but all they told me was that everything was fine, that Mom was doing better, that she was going to be okay." Dawn was crying now, her words garbled between sobs. "Now she won't ... won't even talk about Mom, and she got rid of all Mom's stuff, and ... and she made us move, and … and it's so totally obvious that she doesn't want me around. If she could find our dad, I'd be gone." Dawn covered her face with her hands, a picture of abject misery in the middle of the sunny kitchen

Spike silently absorbed Dawn's words, a wave of sympathy overwhelming him. He even found himself feeling sorry for Buffy; maybe there was a reason the girl acted like such a harridan. At a loss for anything to say, and finally coming to the realization that there was nothing to say beyond perhaps an ineffectual 'sorry,' Spike opted for action rather than words. He stood, patted Dawn awkwardly on the shoulder, and grabbed a towel, which he shoved into Dawn's hand. He puttered aimlessly around the kitchen waiting for her sobs to taper off. Only when he heard the scrape of her utensils on her plate did he rejoin her, placing a large glass of water in front of her.

Dawn took the proffered glass with a tremulous smile. "Thanks," she said, her voice subdued. Spike sat down and both turned their attention back to their breakfasts.

"How you doing, little bit?" he asked when Dawn had cleared her plate. "Got more pancakes if you're still hungry."

Dawn shook her head. "No, thanks." She regarded him for a moment. "Spike? How come you call me that?"

Spike cocked his head to the side. "Call you what?"

"'Little bit.' You called me that yesterday, too."

Spike stood then, reaching for Dawn's empty dishes and stacking them with his. "I- Sorry, Dawn. Didn't even realize I was doing it." He set the dishes on the counter and filled the sink with hot, soapy water. "Used to call my sister that," he added, not looking at her. "You remind me of her, is all."

"I don't mind." Dawn stood next to him, the last few dishes in her hands. "Nicknames are nice, you know? My mom called me her little punkin belly." The girl's voice trailed off, and Spike glanced over at her with concern. "Um, how old is your sister?" she asked, shaking off her gloom.

Spike ignored the question. "I'm going to do up the dishes. If you want to get your cable fix in, you go ahead, okay? Living room's through there," a slight nod of his head indicated the appropriate door, "and the remote's on the table. Just give a holler if you need any help."

Dawn hesitated a moment, mouth slightly open as if she had more she wanted to say. Then she turned and walked out of the kitchen, only glancing back at him once. In a minute, Spike heard the TV go on. He sighed and plunged his hands into the sink, grateful for the distracting burn of the hot water.

* * *

><p><em>I'm not worried, I'm not worried,<em>Buffy chanted to herself as she hauled groceries from the car to the kitchen of the too-quiet house. She mulled over her options while putting the groceries away-no sense letting the perishables go to waste, not with as tight as their budget was. It was only when she found herself standing in front of the pantry, a bag of frozen peas slowly turning to mush in her hands, that she acknowledged she was, in fact, truly concerned. Dawn had a temper, but most of her tantrums were like summer rainstorms-sudden, punishing, and quickly over.

Buffy jotted down a list of Dawn's friends with the help of her mother's address book. Upon calling them, however, not one of them had seen Dawn-not they'd admit to, at least. Buffy had some serious doubts as to whether or not she could trust Janice's word on the matter, but stopped short of demanding to speak to the girl's mother. Buffy hung up the phone after running through her entire list, and sat glumly at the kitchen table, staring blindly out the open patio door.

That was when she heard Dawn's voice. Buffy clenched her jaw when she realized the sound was coming from next door and that Dawn's voice was countered by a low, rumbling baritone.

Buffy rushed out of the house, across the driveway, and into her neighbor's yard. Sure enough, Dawn and Spike were sitting on the deck, laughing and talking as if nothing were amiss with that picture.

"So, Lady Gaga, is that the bird with all the crazy hats? The one who thinks nylons can double as pants?"

Dawn laughed and smacked the peroxide-blond on the arm. "She's got an awesome voice! The costumes are just … costumes, you know?"

"Tell you what, I'll make you a disc of some good music and-"

"Dawn," Buffy said loudly. The two turned to look at her, identical expressions of innocent surprise on their faces. Dawn was the first to speak.

"Uh, hi, Buffy," she said. "I- um, Spike made me breakfast and we were- I mean, I was just about to come home. Because you're home now. I came home before, but you were gone, and Spike said I could hang out here til you got back. And … and we've got all that unpacking to do, right?" She stood, giggling nervously.

"Right," Buffy said. She folded her arms across her chest and fixed her gaze on Spike. He seemed determined to look anywhere but at her. "Since you're so eager to get the unpacking done, Dawn, why don't you go ahead and get started."

Dawn glanced at Spike,before stepping off the deck. "Bye, Spike," she said. "Thanks for breakfast and … and everything."

"Anytime," Spike said. He smiled at Dawn as she left the yard. The smile left his face when he looked at Buffy. He leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette.

Buffy stalked up onto the deck and planted herself directly in front of Spike's lounging figure.

"There a problem, princess?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow at her.

Buffy noticed the scar on his left eyebrow and wondered idly how that had gotten there. Piercing gone wrong, perhaps? Then she shook her head and focused on being angry. "Yes, there's a problem," she snarled. "The problem is that my fourteen year old sister ran out of my house hours ago and has, what-been hanging out with the Billy Idol wannabe next door? Do you have a brain in your head, or did you bleach it to death?"

Spike stood up, a move which put him squarely in Buffy's personal space. She took two steps backwards and tried not to gulp when he took two corresponding steps forward. His black t-shirt was skin-tight, she noted. In fact, she could-yes, there it was-make out the shape of his nipple ring beneath the thin cotton. And oh, god, why was she staring at his chest like a twelve year old boy confronted with his first glimpse of cleavage? Her face flushed and she took a few more quick steps back.

"What was it I should have done?" Spike asked. He kept his distance, thankfully. Buffy found she could think much more clearly when he wasn't within touching range.

"Oh, let me think," Buffy said. "How about send her home where she belongs? Did it never occur to you that maybe I was worried about her?"

He took a long drag on his cigarette. "Oh, yeah? When was the worrying, exactly? When you smacked her, or when you took off for a couple hours?"

Buffy flushed again, though this time it was anger that colored her skin rather than embarrassment. "I don't have to explain myself to you."

"No, you don't," Spike said. "But maybe you should explain yourself to Dawn."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Buffy couldn't believe she was being lectured by a guy named _Spike _on how to take care of her sister. Dawn was so in trouble for even putting her in this situation.

Spike shrugged carelessly. "Why don't you ask her? When's the last time you two talked – really talked?"

Buffy narrowed her eyes at him. "Who do you think you are? You don't know me, you don't know my sister, and you don't know anything about our relationship. You think I need to take advice from some … some 80's reject?"

If Buffy was hoping for an angry response, she was sorely disappointed. Spike chuckled and stubbed out his smoke. "You're right, I don't know you. But I do know that that little girl was over here pouring her heart out to a stranger, instead of talking to the one person in the world who ought to understand better than anyone what she's feeling right now. Maybe you wanna ask yourself why that is."

Buffy gaped at Spike for a long moment, not sure of how to respond. He sounded so … sincere and concerned. Which was just laughable coming from this, this … punk with the black-on-black attire and all the eye makeup and chunky silver jewelry. And was that glint of silver behind his smirk a tongue ring? Buffy wondered briefly what other body parts he might have pierced. So not a thought she wanted occupying space in her brain.

As she stood there trying to formulate some sort of come-back, Spike turned and walked into the house without another word. The door closed forcefully behind him.

Buffy took another minute to brace herself before heading home for what was bound to be an unpleasant conversation with her sister. She knew one thing for certain: Dawn was going to be absolutely forbidden to step so much as a toe on their neighbor's property from here on out.


	5. Chapter 5

Dawn had intended to get to work unpacking, really she had. She wanted to avoid another fight with Buffy if at all possible. But when she walked into the living room and saw Kokopelli standing on the coffee table, it was all she could do to make her legs move her across the room. She sank to the floor and pulled the statue into her arms.

It was several minutes before Dawn heard Buffy enter the room. "You got him back," Dawn said softly. She kept her eyes fixed on the little figurine.

Buffy came to sit on the floor next to her. "I should have asked if there was anything special you wanted to keep."

Dawn set the figure down and threw her arms around her sister. "I'm so sorry!" she sobbed. "I didn't mean it, Buffy."

Buffy stroked Dawn's hair. "I know." She took a deep breath. "I don't want us to be fighting all the time, Dawnie. It's just us, now. Not much of a family if we can't even be in the same room without blowing up at each other.

Dawn looked down at her lap, traced the outline of one fluffy sheep on her pajama pants. "We _aren't_much of a family," she mumbled. She was taken by surprise when Buffy placed a firm hand under her chin, forcing Dawn to meet her eyes.

"I love you, Dawn. And I know things have been … hard. I'm not trying to make you mad at me. I just don't know … I don't know what to do to make things better."

Dawn stared at Buffy, startled by the naked emotion on her sister's face. "I miss her so much," she whispered. "And now … now I don't have anyone."

Buffy's cheeks burned with sudden color. Dawn hoped she hadn't said the wrong thing. She didn't want to make Buffy mad, she just wanted everything to go back to how it used to be. But she had to open her stupid big mouth, and now there was going to be another fight.

"How can you say that?" Buffy's voice, so serious and low and sounding like she wanted to cry, made Dawn's stomach hurt. "You have _me_!"

Dawn pulled away from Buffy and wrapped her arms tightly around her middle. That didn't make her stomach feel any better. "I don't, though. You don't-" Dawn dared a glance up and bit her lip before continuing. "You don't want me around. You've barely even looked at me since Mom died. You don't tell me anything, or ask me what _I_want, you just … make all the decisions and … and those stupid to-do lists every day." Dawn's voice was rising, and she was all too aware of the stormy expression in Buffy's eyes. "I feel like I'm just one more thing you have to cross off your list. 'Do the laundry-check, pay the bills-check, put up with bratty little sister-check.'"

"Dawn, I … there are things that I have to do, and I don't know what they all are. I'm trying, but I don't even know what I'm doing. Mom … Mom always knew-"

"You don't have to be Mom."

"But I do," Buffy said. She was crying freely now, and Dawn instinctively scooted closer to her. "I have to, Dawn, because who else is going to take care of us?"

Dawn hesitantly put an arm around Buffy's shoulders. Buffy turned into her sister's embrace, her body wracked with tears. Dawn swallowed hard. "We can … we can take care of each other. I'm not a baby. I can help. I _want_to help." Something Buffy had said earlier came back to her, and her eyes widened in horror. "Do we have enough money for groceries and stuff? Do you want me to get a job?"

Buffy laughed through her tears and sat up. "No, I don't want you to get a job. You need to concentrate on school."

"I could babysit."

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Yes, because you love little kids so much. Have you forgotten the last family reunion?"

Dawn flushed at the memory. "That's not fair! Jacob was being completely obnoxious!"

"Jacob was being _two_." Buffy smiled at Dawn. "But we're okay. Selling the house and the gallery helped a lot. I know you didn't want to move, but we really had no other choice."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Buffy sighed. "I didn't want you to worry," she said with a shrug. "And it's not like you made it very easy to sit down and have a talk about finances."

Dawn blushed again. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry, too." Dawn looked up at Buffy's apology. "I shouldn't have hit you, sweetie." She stroked Dawn's cheek very gently before pulling her in to a tight hug. "I love you, Dawn," Buffy whispered fiercely.

Dawn swallowed past the lump in her throat. "I love you, too." She put her arms around Buffy and returned the hug with all her might. For the first time in what seemed like forever, Dawn felt safe and loved, felt like the weight she'd been carrying around was lifted. Her eyes slipped shut, and she snuggled into Buffy's side.

"If you're serious about helping," Buffy said a little while later, "there's an entire kitchen that needs to be unpacked."

Dawn groaned, but it was a good natured sound. She sat up and looked at her sister, feeling suddenly shy. "I can do that," she said with a smile as she scrambled up off the floor.

* * *

><p>"Can I come in?" Buffy asked from her position very carefully just outside Dawn's room. She tapped one 'pretty-in-pink' fingernail against the door jamb. "I want to talk about some stuff."<p>

Dawn glanced up from where she lay sprawled across her bed. She pulled her notebook closer to her, but not before Buffy caught a glimpse of the glossy teen magazine Dawn had been drooling over in lieu of homework.

She decided to let it pass without comment. They'd managed to get through the rest of the day without fighting, and Buffy didn't want to start one now.

Dawn sat up and gathered her books, making room on her bed for Buffy to sit. "Sure," she said quietly.

Buffy perched on the edge of the bed. "I'm starting work tomorrow, you know."

Dawn nodded. "Yeah, I remember."

"So, I'm not going to be here when you get home. Can I trust you to-"

Dawn groaned. "Come on, Buffy! I'm not a baby, remember? I'll be fine."

"I'm sure you will, just … Use your head, okay? No friends over when I'm not home, get your homework done, don't eat your weight in Cheetos-"

"All right!" Dawn snapped. "It's not like I've never been home alone before. Mom used to work late sometimes, remember?" She bent to retrieve her back pack and started shoving her books and notebooks into it.

Buffy laid a hand on Dawn's arm, halting her angry movements. "Dawn. I'm just trying to look out for you, okay?"

Dawn stared at Buffy for a moment before relenting. "Yeah, I know."

Buffy smiled. Maybe she was getting the hang of this parenting-a-teenager thing. "Good." She stood up and moved to the doorway. She paused, then added, "And stay away from Spike, okay?"

Dawn's bookbag hit the floor with a thud. "What? Why?"

"Because I'm telling you to. I don't know what all you told him today, but I … I don't like him, and I don't want you going over there. Besides, he's gotta be, what? Thirty? Why does he want to hang out with a kid?"

Dawn scowled and folded her arms across her chest. "He's twenty-nine," she said. "And maybe he thinks I'm cool."

Buffy laughed disbelievingly. "Sure. Just do what I ask, all right, Dawn?"

"You're not the boss of me." Dawn stuck her lower lip out.

"Yes, Dawn, I am," Buffy sighed. "That's what all those papers I had to sign mean: 'Buffy is the boss of Dawn.' So get used to it, little sister."

Dawn's scowl grew more pronounced. "Get out." She flopped down on her bed and reached for her magazine again. She looked over at Buffy, who still stood in the doorway. "I said, get out!"

Buffy stepped into the hallway and pulled Dawn's door closed behind her. Okay, maybe she wasn't quite in the parenting groove yet. She leaned against the wall and exhaled heavily. She tried to think what her mother would do and sudden sorrow hammered through her chest. She gasped for air and her hands shook by her sides. She spared a silent promise to Dawn that they'd make it up in the morning and headed for the sanctuary of her room. It was a close thing, but she managed to hold back her sobs until the door was closed tightly behind her.

* * *

><p>Dawn let herself into the house and promptly dropped her back pack and keys on the floor next to the front door. She plopped on the couch and reached for the remote control before remembering that zoning out in front of the TV was no longer an option. She let out a beleaguered sigh, then headed for the kitchen.<p>

A quick rummage through the cupboards failed to turn up anything good. "I couldn't eat my weight in Cheetos even if I wanted to," she complained. She settled for a peach and a glass of milk and slumped at the kitchen table to eat her snack. She eyed the phone, but knew that Janice wouldn't be home yet; _she_got to do whatever she wanted after school and that usually meant going to the mall or window-shopping downtown.

Dawn drummed her fingers on the table in an idle rhythm, her head propped up by the other hand. She would never tell Buffy, but she hated being home alone. Her mom had known that and always tried her best to arrange her schedule so she'd be home when Dawn got out of school. There was no way Buffy could do that, Dawn knew. She wasn't stupid, so she wouldn't even mention it. Besides, she didn't want Buffy to think she was a little kid who was scared to be alone. Anyway she wasn't scared, she just … didn't like the quiet.

With another sigh, Dawn went to the living room to retrieve her back pack. No TV meant no distraction from the pile of homework awaiting her attention. She'd slacked off on completing her assignments in the past couple months. While her teachers had been understanding at first, some of them were beginning to lose that understanding look when they asked about her missing work.

Dragging her feet, Dawn made her way back to the kitchen table and sat down. She spread her books out in front of her. It was a cornucopia of subjects, and she was behind in all of them. She decided to go with the least painful first and pulled her history textbook towards her. She had a couple of chapters to read and a set of questions to answer about each one. That didn't seem so hard.

What felt like an eternity later, but was only twenty minutes according to the clock, Dawn sat back with a groan. One chapter down, only … five more to go. Dawn skimmed through the book. The next fifty pages of history looked to be about as dull as the ones she'd just covered. Maybe English would be better? Dawn scrunched up her nose at the thought of reading poetry for the next hour, but happily slammed her history book shut. She had just opened the English text when she glanced outside to see Spike lounging on his back porch. It took Dawn a good three seconds to forget Buffy's rule, and then she was skipping out the back door to lean on the fence separating their yards.

"Hey," she said, aiming for casual and-judging by Spike's amused grin-missing by about a mile. Dawn flushed, but geez, for being old, he was kind of sexy. She took in his bare feet and messy curls. Scratch that. He was just plain sexy; age had nothing to do with it.

"How's it going?" Spike said, his grin growing wider by the second.

Great. He totally thought she was crushing on him, which, um, maybe. "I'm okay," Dawn said, finally. Cool as a cucumber. "Trying to do lots of lame homework."

"Oh, yeah? What're they foisting on you kids these days?"

Dawn made her way around the fence and into his yard before answering. "Well, we're reading Shakespeare in English class right now." She blew out a breath. "It's so boring."

"What?" Spike's eyebrows darted up, and he scowled. "That just means they're not teaching it right. Go get your book."

Dawn didn't have to be told twice.

* * *

><p>"Dawn!" Buffy called from her post at the foot of the stairs. "Come on, Dawnie!"<p>

"I'll be right there!" Dawn emerged from her room and glared at Buffy. "Stop rushing me."

Buffy gaped at Dawn in disbelief. "You aren't even dressed. What are you doing? We're going to be late."

Dawn huffed a little, tossed her hair over her shoulder, and stomped into the bathroom without a word. The door closed firmly behind her.

Buffy suppressed the urge to drag Dawn out of the bathroom and send her to school in her pajamas. Instead she took a deep breath and very slowly counted to ten. It helped to remind herself that not all that long ago it had been _her_dawdling before school while her mother tapped her foot and counted down the minutes.

"Dawn!" Buffy yelled again. "Five minutes, or I'm leaving without you."

The bathroom door opened, and Dawn strolled out, face shiny and scrubbed. She was busy working half of her hair into a braid; the other half still hung loose over her left shoulder. "I'll be down in a minute," she said, and disappeared into her room.

"I'll be in the car." Buffy grabbed her bags and headed outside, ignoring Dawn's muffled reply. Letting the little things slide seemed to be the easiest method of maintaining the delicate peace that had sprung up between the sisters over the past two weeks. Dawn had been making an effort to act like a rational human being, with a dramatic decrease in sulks, temper tantrums, and slammed doors. In recognition of that fact, Buffy had resolved to overlook Dawn's occasional reversion to moody teenage behavior.

Buffy started the Land Rover and set the air conditioning to high. Even this early in the morning, the day was promising to be a scorcher. Buffy allowed herself to fantasize briefly about skipping her shift at the Doublemeat and heading for the beach. At this point, Buffy thought, she would settle for a sprinkler in the back yard. Anything was better than facing eight mind-numbing hours of distressingly greasy work Especially when they all too-often stretched into ten, twelve, or-if she got really lucky-sixteen hours.

Buffy looked at the dashboard clock and realized Dawn's five minutes had come and gone. She got out of the car just as Dawn flew out of the house, a paper-bag lunch in one hand, and her book bag in the other.

"I'm ready," Dawn said cheerfully, climbing into the passenger seat and immediately pulling down the visor mirror. A tube of lip gloss materialized from somewhere. Lip gloss which belonged to Buffy, if she wasn't mistaken. As did the mini-skirt Dawn wore.

"Dawn Louise Summers, you are not going to school looking like that," she said. She stopped cold upon hearing her mother's words coming out of her own mouth. If memory served, she had heard something quite similar the first-and last-time she ever wore that same article of clothing.

Buffy leaned her head against the car. This was not good.

"Whatever," Dawn said, completely disinterested in her sister's mental crisis. "We're late. I don't have time to change." She grinned in such a way that Buffy almost forgot all about their truce.

Buffy moved to join Dawn in the SUV, a sharp answer on her tongue, but paused at the sound of rumbling bass approaching.

Her neighbor's big black boat of a car pulled up to the curb in front of his house, and the door opened, expelling a cloud of cigarette smoke along with a wave of screaming, incomprehensible lyrics. Then the music cut off-much to Buffy's relief-and Spike stepped out of the vehicle.

He looked decidedly rumpled, Buffy observed. His hair, usually carefully arranged into spikes or gelled straight back, was a mass of tangled curls. His boot laces flopped loosely while he walked, as if he'd been in too much of a hurry to tie them before leaving … wherever he had been. He glanced over at Buffy as he strode across the lawn. He looked like a tomcat just back from a good prowl.

"Morning, kitten." He smirked when he caught her staring at him. "See something you like?" He waggled his eyebrows at her and curled his tongue.

Buffy flushed. She hated it when he did that. "Ego much?" Buffy replied coolly, wrinkling her nose ever so slightly. "Because let me just say: Eww."

Spike laughed, totally unfazed by her disdain. He waved at Dawn, who bounced a little on her seat and grinned. The traitor.

"Hi, Spike!"

"Morning, Dawn." Spike turned to Buffy with an evil smirk. "You take care, Bunny."

Buffy clenched her jaw and ignored him. He was doing it just to get a rise out of her. The sad part was it usually worked. Every time he saw her, he called her some silly name-most often 'Bunny,' but occasionally he'd throw in a 'Bitsy' or a 'Betty.' And due to his habit of arriving home at about the same time Buffy and Dawn were leaving the house, she saw him a lot.

Despite her vow to not let him get to her, Buffy was fuming when she got back behind the wheel and drove away. "He is so icky!

"I don't think he's icky," Dawn said.

"Well, think again, sister, he's-" Buffy happened to catch the blush and embarrassed smile on Dawn's face. "Oh, my god. You have a crush on _Spike_!"

"What? No, I don't! I just … he's nice to me, and he has cool hair, and a leather coat, and … and he doesn't talk to me like I'm a kid!"

"What? When was all this being nice and talking going on since you're not allowed to go over there?"

Dawn shifted uneasily in her seat and didn't answer her.

Buffy sighed. "I told you to stay away from him. I don't like you hanging out with him. And he's … Eww, Dawnie, I forbid you to have a crush on him!"

Dawn sank down in her seat and crossed her arms over her chest. "Whatever. You can't tell me what to do."

Buffy looked at Dawn's mini-skirt and pilfered-lip-gloss enhanced lips. "Yeah. That's becoming pretty clear," she said, though she pitched her voice too low for Dawn to hear. Then she moved the conversation to safer ground. "What are your plans after school? Xander could probably pick you up if-"

"I'm going to Janice's. We're working on a project for biology. Her brother's gonna drive me home later. We already talked about it."

Buffy was sure they had, given that the two were on the phone every waking moment that they weren't in each other's presence. What she doubted was the existence of a science project, or the intention to do anything that might result in Dawn getting her homework completed for a change. "Really. What's this project about?"

"We're studying the citric-acid cycle, and we have to make something showing all the steps." Dawn smiled brightly when Buffy looked at her. "And we have to write a paper about it. It's due in a couple weeks, so I'll probably be going to Janice's, like, every day."

"Uh-huh." Buffy nodded, still skeptical. "Would you care to explain this, uh, citrus additive to me?"

Dawn rolled her eyes. "Oh. My. God." She stuck her tongue out at Buffy before continuing. "It's how your body turns food into energy that your cells can use. See, you eat, all this stuff goes into your cells, gets zapped by the mitochondria, and turned into different stuff. It's really complicated."

Buffy laughed. "Wow, that's … not at all informative. I expect a better explanation tonight after you _study_at Janice's."

"Yeah, all right. Hey, you can let me out right here. I'll walk the rest of the way."

Buffy pulled over. "Are you sure? I've got time."

"No, it's fine. Don't want you to be late."

Buffy put a hand on Dawn's arm to keep her from jumping out of the car before it had even come to a complete stop. "Dawn, I-" Buffy paused, not quite sure what she wanted to say.

Dawn glanced over her shoulder at the cluster of girls standing on the sidewalk. "Buffy, come on." She hitched her backpack onto one scrawny shoulder. "Everyone's waiting for me."

"Have a good day," Buffy said lamely. Dawn smiled at her and darted down the block. Buffy watched for a moment as Dawn was welcomed into the circle of chattering teenagers, but drove off quickly when Dawn turned, spotted her still idling at the curb, and made frantic shooing motions with her hands. She was a full block away before she realized: she had the potential to embarrass Dawn. '_Yup, officially entering mom territory_,' Buffy thought. She took a quick glance at her reflection just to reassure herself that, no, her hair was not suddenly morphing into mom hair. Right then and there she decided it was time to call an emergency girls' night out.


	6. Chapter 6

_All previous chapters beta'd by the fabulous KnifeEdge. _

_This chapter beta'd by KnifeEdge and Ryn, with a great helping hand from Puddinhead._

* * *

><p>"Here you go," Jason said. He pulled up the car to a stop in front of the house.<p>

"Thanks for the ride." Dawn looked over at him and smiled. She would never, ever tell her friend this, but she thought Janice's brother was, like, the cutest boy ever. His gorgeous, dark blue eyes were fringed by ridiculously long eyelashes, and when he smiled just like he was right now, a dimple creased his right cheek. Dawn gripped her backpack tightly to keep herself from touching that dimple.

"Anytime," Jason said. And then—oh, god—he reached over and brushed his fingers across her cheek. A shiver ran down Dawn's spine when he leaned closer to her.

Then he was kissing her. Jason's lips were pressed to hers, and they were so warm and soft, and he smelled so good. Before she could worry about how she was supposed to breathe, or which way to tilt her head, he was pulling away.

"You're coming over tomorrow, right?" he asked, again with that charming, killer smile.

Dawn nodded numbly. Jason laughed, and she realized she was sitting there staring at him like a big moron. "Uh, yeah, I-I'll see you t-tomorrow," she stammered, and fumbled for the door handle.

Jason didn't pull away from the curb until Dawn had opened her front door. That sent a warm flush through her and, once inside, she leaned against the door for a minute. A goofy grin lit up her face. She wished she could tell Janice all about her Very First Kiss, but somehow, Dawn didn't think the news would go over so well.

"Hey, Dawn," Buffy called. "Come up here, will you?"

Dawn's eyes darted to the stairs at the sound of her sister's voice. She clapped her hands to her cheeks; she could feel the heat of her blush against her palms. Would Buffy know? Could you tell just by looking at her that she'd been kissed?

"Dawn?" Buffy stood at the top of the stairs now, and was looking at her strangely. "Is everything okay?"

She dropped her hands to her sides. "Yeah," she said. She smiled brightly. "I'll be … I'll be right up."

Dawn rushed to the small bathroom next to the kitchen and turned the cold water on full blast. She splashed water on her face and then looked in the mirror. "Jason Penshaw kissed you," she whispered. She grinned at her reflection, hugged herself tightly, and did a little happy dance in the cramped space between the sink and the toilet.

It was a few minutes later that a totally-in-control-of-herself Dawn made her way upstairs. She poked her head into Buffy's room. "What's up?" she said. Buffy sat at the vanity that had belonged to their mother. Her gaze was focused on the mirror as she worked on her makeup. "Are you going somewhere?"

Buffy glanced up. "Hey, Dawnie," she said. "How was Janice's? Did you get your homework done?"

Dawn shrugged and slunk into the room. She plopped down on Buffy's bed. "Yeah, I guess. I mean, we've got a lot of time before it's due." Which was a good thing, since she and Janice had spent most of the school-day at the mall, trying on clothes and hanging out in the food court. They'd followed that with make-up and hair experiments at Janice's house. "How was work?" Dawn asked, hoping to distract Buffy from her lack-luster response to homework-related questions.

Buffy rolled her eyes before leaning closer to the mirror and wielding the mascara brush on her eyelashes. "Do you really need to ask?"

"Sorry you hate your job," Dawn mumbled. Some of the glee she'd felt just moments ago faded. "So, are you going somewhere?" she asked again.

Buffy's eyes met Dawn's in the mirror. "Yeah," she said. "I'm meeting Willow and Tara at the Bronze. You'll be okay home alone, right?" She leaned in again, a tube of lipstick in her hand this time.

Dawn watched, utterly mesmerized by Buffy's movements, as a sense of deja vu swept over her.

_Her mother is sitting at the vanity, putting the finishing touches on her make-up, ready for a night out. Her soft brown eyes sparkle as she gives Dawn—Mommy's little punkin belly—a warm smile in the mirror. "Come here, sweetheart. I'll give you a little spritz," she says, and the perfume bottle in her slender hand catches the light and flashes green into Dawn's eyes._

She closed her eyes, wanting to preserve that memory of her mother happy and alive and animated. But in the darkness behind her eyelids waited the picture Dawn couldn't purge, of Joyce's face still and waxen, and so pale but for the deep shadows below her blank, staring eyes.

Dawn shivered and blinked the image away. "I … what?" she said, catching the questioning look in Buffy's eyes. Her voice sounded small and tremulous .

"Are you sure you're all right, Dawn?" Buffy asked. "I can stay home, if you want me to."

For a long moment Dawn wavered, battling with the desire to spill everything to Buffy. What she'd seen at the hospital, the dreams she'd been having. Heck, she even wanted—for just a second—to tell Buffy about the kiss. Then Dawn looked at Buffy, who had turned back to the mirror and was brushing her hair. A little smile played across her sister's face, and Dawn changed her mind.

"I'm fine," she said. "Just tired. I think I'm going to go to bed."

Buffy set the hairbrush down on the vanity and smiled at Dawn. "Okay. I won't be out too late," she promised.

Dawn nodded and slipped out of Buffy's room without another word.

* * *

><p>Buffy stopped just inside the entrance of the Bronze and scanned the crowd until she spotted a bright flash of red hair. She made her way past the dance floor to the corner of the bar Willow and Tara had claimed for themselves.<p>

"Hey, Buff," Willow greeted her over the din of the crowd and the band playing on stage. She lifted her purse from an otherwise-empty bar stool. "We even managed to save you a seat."

"Thanks, Willow," Buffy said gratefully. She sat with a sigh. "You have no idea how glad I am this day is over. And that you guys could go out tonight. I really need this."

"What happened?" Tara asked.

Buffy placed her drink order with the bartender before turning back to her friends. Rather than letting flow a litany of complaints about her day, though, she simply shrugged in response to Tara's question. Now that she was here with her friends, she just wanted to have fun for a little while. "Just one of those days," she said. Her drink appeared in front of her, and she took an appreciative sip of the fruity concoction. The band started a new song. Buffy's foot tapped in time to the rhythm. "Let's dance," she suggested and downed the rest of her drink. She headed for the small dance floor in front of the stage, grinning widely when Tara and Willow joined her.

Buffy let her eyes slip shut and lost herself in the music, in the movement of her limbs, in the heat and noise of the crowd around her. It was only when the band stopped for a set break that Buffy realized she had not, in the past half hour, thought once about the worries that had plagued her throughout the day. The bills that kept arriving daily, the job that she fantasized about leaving, and most of all, the unending responsibility that was her little sister. All her concerns had been pushed out of her mind as she threw herself into the physical act of dancing.

Once she was standing still, though, they all came rushing back. She was overwhelmed suddenly by a surge of resentment for the obligations her mother's death had left her, and she struggled to hide the flood of emotion from Willow and Tara. She mumbled an excuse and hurried toward the dark hallway that housed the restrooms. She bypassed the women's room for the door that let out into the alley behind the Bronze. The cool night air was a relief against her overheated skin as she leaned against the rough brick wall. She pressed her fingertips to her eyes in an effort to stem the tears that threatened. It was several minutes before she felt calm enough to slip back into the club.

Her friends had reclaimed their spots at the bar, and Buffy smiled faintly as she joined them. She was grateful for the volume of the music playing on the PA system, making any meaningful conversation impossible. She ordered another drink, which Willow insisted was on her, and let her eyes roam over the crowd.

Her gaze paused on a man bending low over one of the pool tables. He was turned away from her so that she couldn't see his face, but what she could see was … nice. Definitely nice. Faded blue jeans rode loosely across his hips, and his black sleeveless shirt shifted as he leaned to line up his shot. Buffy was treated to a view of smooth, pale skin. Well, smooth other than the ripple of muscles as he moved. And really, how ripped was the rest of him bound to be if that was how his lower back looked? He straightened up, and she noticed the defined bulge of his biceps as he planted the cue on the floor next to him. Then the combination of chunky silver jewelry—rings on several fingers of both hands, and thick bracelets circling both wrists—and white-blond hair registered with Buffy, even before he turned and gave her a glimpse of one stunning cheekbone and the aquiline line of his nose.

Oh, god, she had _not_just been drooling over her neighbor. She quickly drained her drink and signaled to the bartender for a refill. Too bad the alcohol couldn't scrub her initial "hello, hottie" reaction right out of her brain.

* * *

><p>Spike hid a smirk behind his pint of beer when he caught Buffy staring at him from across the bar. He'd seen her earlier, shaking her ass on the dance floor. Hard to miss her, the way she tossed all her shiny hair about. Not to mention the abbreviated skirt and scrap of material that was posing as a shirt. She was a hot little thing, he'd give her that, regardless of what an annoying prig she could be.<p>

'Course, annoying was all relative, he reflected, glancing at the blonde cozying up to him.

"Oh, Spikey, you're so good at pool," Harmony cooed in his ear. "Can you teach me how to … get the balls in the holes?" She fluttered her eyelashes coyly, and he found himself returning her lascivious grin. The chit might have about as much depth as a cardboard cutout, but she certainly knew how to wear leather.

"Sure thing," he said.

* * *

><p>Buffy watched, weirdly fascinated, as Harmony flipped her hair—again—and an indelicate snort of amusement escaped her. "Oh, give me a break!" she exclaimed. Tara glanced at her, a little startled at her unexpected outburst.<p>

"What?" Tara said, her eyes drifting between Buffy's face and the object of her attention.

Buffy inclined her head toward the pool table. Harmony now leaned over the edge of the table, ostensibly taking careful aim, but in actuality waggling her leather-clad behind in Spike's direction. "That!" Buffy said. "It's gross. I just don't get what guys see in Harmony."

"Really?" Tara said. She took a closer look. "I think it's her boobs."

Buffy gaped at Tara. She was so taken aback by the other girl's matter-of-fact statement that Buffy almost missed the glint of mischief in her eyes. Buffy laughed then, while Tara and Willow exchanged a look.

"Am I sensing some vibes?" Willow asked, chewing on the straw in her drink.

"Vibes?" Buffy said.

Willow nodded in Spike's direction. "Is this like when little kids hit each other when they like each other? I mean, you've been complaining about him every time I talk to you and now with the, um, jealous of Harmony-" Willow's voice trailed off when she caught the expression on Buffy's face. "So, no vibes, then?" she added, finally, very meekly.

"Oh, ew. No, Willow!" Buffy protested. "No vibes. I am one hundred percent vibe-free."

Willow shrugged. "Sorry, my bad." She turned back to her drink, rattling the last few ice cubes around the bottom of the glass.

Buffy shot one last glance at her neighbor—and seriously, what was with all the safety pins attached to his shirt? He _so_needed to lose the punk look—then turned her back determinedly on the sight of him.

The girls chatted idly for awhile and danced to a few more songs before Willow and Tara started making noises about heading home.

"What about you, Buff?" Willow asked as she gathered her purse and sweater. "Are you going home?"

"Nah," Buffy said. "I think I want to dance a little bit more."

"You're sure?" Willow asked again. Buffy nodded. "All right, call me tomorrow, okay?" Willow hugged Buffy quickly, Tara waved goodbye, and Buffy turned back to her drink.

She was going to dance and have some fun, even if everywhere she looked people were coupled up, and she'd been feeling third-wheel-y all night long. She didn't need a boyfriend to have a good time, dammit! And as soon as this drink was gone, she resolved, she was hitting the dance floor. Without really noticing, one drink turned into another as Buffy thought about all the things she had sworn she wasn't going to worry about. Dawn, mostly, and things to do with the care and feeding of Dawn. Buffy drank slowly but steadily. She absently watched the crowd of club-goers, and a pile of shredded napkins grew on the bar in front of her.

It wasn't until the lights flickered on, announcing last call, that Buffy realized the time. She thought guiltily of Dawn at home alone. Her sister may have been on her mind all night, but she'd still failed to make good on her promise not to stay out late. She reached for her purse and began the task of searching for her keys. It proved to be more difficult than she would have expected.

After a lengthy struggle with the clutter in her purse, she drew her hand out, clutching her keys tightly. A large, cool hand closed around hers. The fingernails were coated with chipped, black polish, and heavy silver rings decorated two fingers and the thumb. She looked at the hand, then up into a pair of blue eyes rimmed with dark eyeliner.

Great. Spike. Her night was complete.

And when, exactly, had he perched himself on the bar stool next to hers?

"Going somewhere, princess?" he asked, mildly.

"Home." She snatched her hand out of his grasp. He let her go easily. "Not that it's any of your business."

"How convenient. I'm heading that way myself." Spike stood and offered her his hand. Buffy stared at it, then at him, and hopped down from her seat.

Funny. It hadn't seemed that far from the ground when she first sat down.

Spike was talking again.

"What?" Buffy interrupted him.

Spike sighed and shook his head. "I'm taking you home," he said. He took her elbow with a firm hand and steered her toward the door.

She yanked her arm away from him—well, she tried to, at least. "Oh, please, like I would go home with you!"

"Don't flatter yourself, kitten," he said. "Just meant I'd drive you home. To _your_home," he added. "You're drunk."

"Psh, _you_are," Buffy responded. Well, that was a pathetic excuse for a comeback. Hmm, maybe she was a little drunk. "And whatever you think you're getting out of this, you're not."

Spike gave a little snort. "Nothin' I want from you. It's just that I've seen the way you drive sober, remember? I'm doing a service to mankind, not letting you behind the wheel when you're pissed." Spike opened the club door for her—who knew he had actual manners?—and escorted her into the parking lot.

The night air revived Buffy a little bit, and she managed to liberate herself from his grasp. "What the hell makes you think I'd go anywhere with you?" she snapped.

Spike regarded her seriously. "Wouldn't want Dawn to get a call saying big sis wrapped her car around a tree trunk, now would you?" That drove all the fight out of her, and she let him lead her to his car. She closed her eyes, just for a second, once she was seated in the passenger seat. The motion of the car lulled her into a light sleep, and the next she was aware of was Spike's hand on her shoulder, shaking her awake.

Buffy blinked and looked around, disoriented until she recognized her house. She sat up and yawned and stretched. The car door opened, and Spike held a hand out for her. She took it after only a moment's hesitation.

He walked her to the front door, where she fumbled with the key. For some reason her hands weren't cooperating with her. He took the key ring from her and smiled as he unlocked the door for her.

"Stay out of trouble, Bunny."

Buffy turned on him in a flash, cheeks red and eyes flashing. "My name is _Buffy_," she ground out. "And you know it, you big, mean _jerk_!" She poked him in the chest and felt the shape of his nipple ring beneath her fingertips. Some evil impulse caused Buffy to grasp the jewelry between her thumb and forefinger. "How would you like it if I called you ... called you, um, 'Stake?'" On the last word, Buffy twisted her fingers and pulled roughly on the nipple ring.

Spike's eyes closed and he let forth a low, primal moan. His hands grasped her upper arms and pulled her closer to him. "Bloody hell, love," he hissed, fixing her in a dark, smoldering gaze. "You keep on doing that, and you can call me any bloody thing you like."

Buffy looked down at her hand, which was still tugging and twisting. "Oh," Buffy said, her eyes growing wide. She snatched her hand away and looked up at him for the briefest of moments. The expression on his face, the undisguised lust in those blue eyes, took her breath away. Just like that, the fuzziness caused by too many drinks dissipated, and the reality of what she was doing—who she was touching and exactly how she was touching him—sank in.

"Oh, ew," she said, pulling out of his grasp. "That turns you on?"

Spike laughed. His eyes were still dark and hooded and sexy.

No. Not sexy. Skanky.

"Well, yeah," he said, just as if she had no call to be shocked.

"Oh. My. God. You are … I mean, you're rude and obnoxious, and you play your awful, awful music way too loud, and don't even get me started on the way you dress! Like, do you own anything that's not black?"

Spike glanced down at his faded blue jeans and then back at her, his scarred eyebrow lifting sardonically. He didn't interrupt her, though, just lit a cigarette and watched her with a little smile as she continued.

"And, another thing, Dawn is not allowed to, you know, 'hang out' with you, so … so just stop being all cool and, and," Buffy waved her arms at him, gesturing vaguely to his entire being, "sexy and mysterious, or whatever it is you're going for. No wonder she's always snooping through my closet and taking my stuff. And wearing makeup all of a sudden. I suppose I should just be happy she's not into black eyeliner and trying to be Goth-girl." Somewhere in the back of her head, a little voice-one that sounded an awful lot like Joyce Summers-spoke up and told Buffy she was being unreasonable.

She took a deep breath and dared eye contact with Spike. He smirked at her, and she couldn't quite tell if he was honestly amused or simply masking his anger very well. She waited for him to say something—anything—but instead he took another drag off his cigarette.

Which reminded her- "And the smoking! Seriously? You can't wait thirty seconds until you're off my porch?"

Spike exhaled a lungful of smoke in her direction then, with an insolent shrug, flicked the cigarette onto her front lawn.

"See? This! This is exactly why I don't like you, and why you're not gonna even look at my sister from now on! I want you to stay away from her, got it? She's my responsibility, and I don't need you messing with her head." She jabbed him in the chest to drive her point home.

"How, exactly, am I messing with Dawn?" he asked. A muscle ticked in his jaw.

"She's got a crush on you. Stop ... stop doing whatever it is you're doing to make her like you!" And there went that little voice again.

"So you want me to stop … being nice to your little sis?" Spike chuckled, which only made Buffy angrier.

"Oh, and just so you know—Harmony? Will probably give you STDs they don't even have names for yet!"

"Thanks for the concern, pet," Spike said. The slow drawl of his voice and the dangerous glint in his cold blue eyes made Buffy take a reflexive step backwards. Her cheeks flushed as all the things she'd said echoed in her mind. "But in case you didn't notice," Spike continued, "I didn't go home with Harmony."

Buffy scoffed, too embarrassed now to back down. "Yeah, tonight. What about all the other nights? I suppose you're _not_out every night?"

"Maybe I work nights," Spike offered. "You don't know."

"You're right, I don't," Buffy said. She wanted to wipe that stupid smirk off his face. Preferably with her fist. "And your sex life is so not on my list of things to discuss with you."

"You're the one who ... brought it up," Spike pointed out, with a leer designed to make sure she didn't miss his little innuendo. "Why so interested? 'Cause you're not getting any, is that it?"

Something in Buffy snapped. The next thing she knew, her palm was stinging, and the sharp crack of her hand hitting Spike's cheek still rang in her ears.

"You've got a real problem keeping your hands to yourself, pet." Spike fixed her with a cold stare. "Anybody ever tell you you ought to use your words?"

"I ... I, uh, didn't mean-"

"Yeah, I think you did mean. 'Bout your sister, well, I didn't know the rules. You don't want her hanging out at my place, maybe you should've let me in on that. Or you could get cable. Pretty sure that's what the appeal is." Then he did that thing with his tongue. Buffy could hear the silver barbell piercing click against his even, white teeth. "Or maybe it's just 'cause I'm-what was it? Sexy and mysterious?" That insufferable smirk was back on his face.

Oh, god. Buffy thought back over the things that had spewed out of her mouth. She really had called him 'sexy.' Right to his stupid face. The realization made her itch to smack him again. What the hell was wrong with her? She was _never_this violent and ... grabby.

Then it hit her. It wasn't her fault. It was- "You just keep your smoking and bad music and, and ... weird kinks away from Dawn," Buffy said suddenly. "Because you! Bad influence-y!"

Spike laughed. "Kinks, huh?"

"Yeah," Buffy said. She resisted the urge to give his nipple ring another yank and settled for lightly flicking it instead. "Kinks."

Spike's eyes went dark again, and his hand closed around her wrist, carefully moving her fingers away from his chest. "You about done?" he asked. His voice was very low. Spike didn't give Buffy a chance to answer, instead yanking her roughly towards him and covering her mouth with his own. His lips were firm but soft against hers; he tasted faintly of beer and more strongly of cigarettes. His tongue brushed lightly against the seam of her lips. Before Buffy could begin to process the sensations coursing through her body, Spike released her.

She stared at him, wide-eyed. "I- you- what was that?"

Spike shrugged. "Thought you needed that," he said. "Night, Buffy." He turned and jumped down the three steps to the sidewalk and strode—no, swaggered—across the lawn to his house, pausing only to snag the still-smoldering cigarette butt he'd tossed on the grass. Buffy stared after him, mouth and eyes still wide, until he disappeared inside. Only once he was no longer visible did she retreat into the safety of her own home.

* * *

><p>Spike slammed the door behind him and headed straight for the liquor cabinet. The two shots of whiskey he downed in quick succession did nothing to soothe his ragged emotions. "Infuriating little bint," he complained as he toed off his boots and stalked upstairs. "Mouthy, grabby bitch!"<p>

He peeled off his t-shirt as he entered his bedroom and tossed it carelessly into a corner. The primary source of his frustration reared its head as soon as he popped open the button fly of his jeans. Spike glared down at the offending appendage. "A pretty girl slaps you, and you think it's, what? Foreplay?" His disapproving tone had no discernible effect on his traitorous cock, which bobbed eagerly against his stomach.

"Fuck." Spike gave in to the demands of his body and, shoving his jeans just past his hips, leaned against the bedroom door and took himself in hand. He forced himself to put Buffy out of his mind. No way was he going to have a wank while thinking about that smart-mouthed, stick-up-her-ass little blonde. Didn't matter how hot she'd gotten him, putting her hands on him like that. He was going to get the image of her flushed cheeks and big, angry eyes out of his head. Right. Sodding. Now.

He took a deep breath and stilled the frantic motion of his hand. Just needed to think of something else. He conjured up an image of … yeah, Angelina Jolie. She was sexy. Dark and tattooed, definitely into some weird shit. Nothing could be further away from Little Miss All-American next door.

"Bloody hell!" There was Buffy's face filling his mind's eyes again. The glint in her green eyes, the curve of her luscious mouth … yeah, never should have snogged the chit, no matter how tempting she was. He licked his lips and realized he could still taste her-tasted like honey and strawberries, probably from those fruity drinks she'd been downing all night.

Spike's free hand crept across his flat stomach to his nipple ring. He twisted the piercing and thought of how her clever fingers had felt on him, thought of the way she'd slapped him, the little cu-

"Oh, hell!" His orgasm caught him by surprise. He slumped against the door, breathing heavily, and thought about just how much he hated Buffy Summers.

* * *

><p>Buffy meant to tear her eyes away from her neighbor's half-naked body. Really. The only reason she hadn't fled in horror at the sight of Spike doing ... THAT was because she was drunk. Except she didn't feel all that tipsy anymore, truth be told. Hot and bothered, yes; but drunk? That sensation had pretty much taken a hike the instant she'd laid eyes on the view across the way. And dear god, was she never leaving her blinds open again.<p>

Buffy's fingers twisted in the cords of the blinds. Any second now she was going to let the window coverings do their job. Yup. As soon as Spike stopped looking like at least three of the seven deadly sins all wrapped up in one lickable package.

Oh god, she did not just think about her rude, immature, totally detestable neighbor as lickable, did she? Buffy was very much afraid she had done just that. She was also afraid there was no power in the universe strong enough to erase the image of Spike's hand-black fingernails a striking contrast to all that pale skin-wrapped around his ...

Yeah, that was a vision that would be emblazoned on her brain for all time.

Buffy sighed and finally gained enough control of her limbs to drop the blinds into place. It was a good thing she and Spike weren't going to be friendly neighbors, because she wasn't sure how she'd ever look him in the eye again.


	7. Chapter 7

_Beta'd by KnifeEdge and Ryn, with a great heaping helping of encouragement from Puddinhead._

* * *

><p>"Buffy."<p>

The lump on the bed twitched slightly and pulled the covers more firmly around itself. It made a small, indistinct noise before subsiding back into stillness.

Dawn edged closer to the bed and yanked on the blanket. "Buffy!" she said again. "I'm gonna be late for school." She crossed her arms and eyed her sister's rumpled form. Buffy pulled a pillow over her head and mumbled something that sounded like "sleep good."

"C'mon," Dawn said. "Are you taking me to school or what?" She laughed a little. "And I can't believe I just woke you up to ask you to take me to school. What is wrong with me?"

Buffy rolled over and looked at the clock. "I'm taking you to school," she croaked.

"You don't have to," Dawn said hopefully. "I can call school and tell them I can't make it. You should go back to sleep."

The impact of Buffy's look-of-death was lessened somewhat by the way she was squinting through bloodshot eyes. Dawn shrugged innocently.

"Are you okay?" she asked. "You look a little, uh ..." Dawn was pretty sure there wasn't a polite way to say 'death warmed over,' so she stopped before she said anything that would make Buffy mad. "Um, you were out really late," she added. She cringed inwardly at the needy tone in her voice.

Buffy sat up slowly; the expression on her face made it look like sitting up was equivalent to scaling a mountain. "I'm sorry," she said. Then she went extra-pale and got all sweaty. She hurtled off the bed and past Dawn into the bathroom, where she just managed to make it to the toilet before throwing up.

Dawn screwed up her face. "Oh, yuck," she muttered, and hurried to close the bathroom door. Muffling the sounds of Buffy being sick was a very good choice, unless Dawn wanted to be in there next to her. She stood outside the bathroom, shifting from foot to foot, until she heard the toilet flush. That was followed by the sound of running water. She opened the door just a crack. Buffy leaned over the sink, splashing water on her cheeks.

"I'll be ready in a minute," Buffy said without looking at Dawn. "You can get your stuff and get in the car, okay?"

Dawn waited a second before clomping down the stairs as loudly as she could manage. She stopped in the kitchen for a quick rummage through the cupboards. She unearthed a bottle of Yoo-hoo at the back of the fridge and threw it, along with an apple, into her backpack. Buffy still hadn't emerged from the bathroom by the time Dawn was standing on the front porch. She smiled to herself. With any luck, she'd miss math class. Not that she'd really planned on going in any case, but at least this way it wasn't her fault.

Dawn made it almost to the driveway before she realized the Land Rover was nowhere to be seen. She rolled her eyes and wondered briefly how Buffy had made it home last night. She went back inside and stomped back upstairs. The bathroom door was closed again, and she could hear the water running. She knocked on the door. "Um, Buffy? Where's the car?"

The water cut off abruptly. Buffy cursed quietly but clearly. Then there came a rhythmic thumping. It sounded a little like someone banging their head against a wall. After a minute, Buffy finally opened the door. "Will you call Xander and ask him for a ride?" she said, a little sheepishly.

Dawn sighed. "Whatever," she said.

The door closed as Dawn made the trip downstairs again.

Fifteen minutes later, Dawn sat on the front steps waiting for Buffy to make her appearance. Her backpack sat between her feet. She had pulled out her English textbook to pass the time. Some of the poetry wasn't so bad, especially since Spike had explained the metaphors to her.

Speaking of Spike ... Dawn's head lifted at the unmistakable sound of punk rock accompanied by the throaty growl of a souped-up engine. She smiled brightly when Spike's car roared down the street. Dawn met him at the sidewalk, textbook clutched to her chest. "Hi, Spike," she greeted him as he emerged from his vehicle. Spike nodded and cut his eyes over her shoulder before looking back at her and smiling.

"Morning, Dawn," he said.

"I have a huge favor to ask," she said. "See, Buffy must've left her car at the Bronze last night, and I tried calling our friends but no one can come pick me up, and I'm gonna be late for school, and ... Can I have a ride? Please?" Dawn made her most pitiful 'poor me' face. Then she figured she'd better throw in a little bribery, just in case Spike wasn't a sucker for puppy dog eyes. "I'll, uh, I'll do your dishes for a week!"

Spike laughed, leaned back against the car, and pulled out a cigarette. He paused in the motion of lighting it, hand cupped around the flame of his Zippo, and gave Dawn a strange look. He flipped the lighter shut and shook the cigarette in her direction. "You know these things are bad for you, right?"

"Duh," Dawn said. "The real question is, do _you _know that? And geez, random much? So, how about a ride?"

Spike looked beyond Dawn again. "Think big sis might have something to say about that idea," he said, nodding toward her house.

Dawn turned and saw Buffy coming toward them. She still looked really rough. Her hair was scraped back into a messy ponytail, and she wore a pair of baggy sweatpants and a faded UC Sunnydale t-shirt. Dawn rolled her eyes and turned back to Spike. "Whatever. She's just cranky because she's, like, hungover or something."

"No, I'm 'cranky' because you can't seem to do anything I ask," Buffy said. "I thought I told you to call Xander."

"I did," Dawn replied. "Anya said he left for work already."

"So why don't you run inside and call Willow?" Buffy suggested in a tone that brooked no disobedience.

Dawn didn't move. "I did that, too. No one was home. But Spike doesn't mind taking me to school. Right, Spike?" She grinned at him and fluttered her eyelashes for good measure.

Spike's shoulders relaxed into a soft, huffing laugh. He looked at Buffy. "Listen, pet," he began.

"Don't call me that," Buffy snapped. She was obviously trying to pull off that thing where she made herself seem a lot more imposing than she actually was. Spike looked completely unimpressed.

"_Buffy_," he said. "I don't mind running Dawn to school. If that's okay with you."

Buffy glared at Spike. "Did you not listen to a word I said last night?"

Spike shook his head. Then, with a cold smile, he lit his cigarette. "Nope. Guess not," he said. He took a long drag and exhaled in Buffy's direction.

Dawn smacked Spike on the arm. "That was really rude!"

Spike pitched the cigarette into the street, earning himself another smack from Dawn. "Bloody hell," he muttered. "All right, look, I'm sorry. And ... it's kinda my fault you don't have a car this morning, so I'll take Dawn to school. Least I can do, right?"

Buffy gave Spike a long, considering look. "I don't think so," she said finally. "Come on, Dawn." She turned to go back to the house.

"Buffy—" Dawn started.

Spike took a step forward and grabbed Buffy's shoulder. "Oi! Unclench, sweetheart," he said. "Tryin' to be helpful here, you know?"

Buffy shrugged off his hand and spun around. "Helpful. Really. Is that what you were doing last night when you—" She stopped abruptly and turned an alarming shade of red.

Spike moved closer to her until they were practically nose to nose. "You mean when I didn't let you drive your drunk self home? Yeah, that was me bein' helpful. 'S what neighbors are for, yeah? Maybe if you didn't have that sodding stick rammed so far up your ass—"

Dawn had had enough. She stepped between the two so-called adults, fists planted on her hips. "Stop it!" she said. She was alarmed to feel tears of frustration welling up and tried to blink them back. Then she thought that maybe crying wasn't the worst thing she could do in this situation and let the tears fall. "Can you please stop fighting already? Please?" Suddenly Dawn's tears weren't just a ploy; she felt uncomfortably like she had as a little girl when her parents would fight. Her breath caught in her throat.

"Dawnie," she heard Buffy say.

"Hey, Dawn," Spike said at the same time.

Then Buffy was hugging her tightly. Dawn wasn't entirely sure, but she thought the pat on her back was courtesy of Spike. She burrowed her face into the crook of Buffy's neck until she had herself back under control.

Dawn pulled away from Buffy finally and scrubbed at her damp cheeks with the heel of her hand. "I need to go wash my face," she mumbled, not looking at either Buffy or Spike. Especially not at Spike, not after acting like a big, dumb baby in front of him.

"Okay," Buffy said gently. "Will you grab my purse on your way out? I'll come with you guys. Spike can take me to get my car after we drop you off at school."

Dawn glanced up then, just in time to catch the look—part surprise, part dismay—that Spike gave Buffy as her words sank in. Dawn smiled broadly, her tears mostly forgotten, and sprinted for the house.

* * *

><p>Buffy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Nope, that wasn't any better. Her eyes popped open. She wasn't sure where she should be looking to keep from getting carsick. Not that she was <em>car <em>sick, but still ... the road seemed bumpier than she remembered. Probably had something to do with driving around in an antique. Did they have suspension when this car had been built? The car went over another ridiculously large bump, and Buffy gulped, hoping she could hang on to the sparse contents of her stomach just a little bit longer. At least the vehicle was clean, if a little smoky-smelling. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting—a carpet of empty liquor bottles and overflowing ashtrays, maybe—but the interior was surprisingly spotless.

"How you doin' back there, pet?" Spike asked. He was watching her in the rearview mirror, which for some reason was mounted right on the dashboard. Buffy wasn't sure how he could see anything beyond the back seat.

"I'm fine," she said shortly. Buffy looked around for something to distract her from the way her stomach was rolling. The way the houses and trees were whizzing by outside the window was definitely not helpful. She scrabbled for the window crank and let out a sigh of relief at the breeze that cooled her sweaty face.

"If you're gonna heave, let me know so I can pull over," Spike said. He turned halfway around in his seat, a look of real concern on his face. "Last thing I need is you puking all over my baby." Too bad the concern was for the car, not the actual human sitting in the back seat.

"I'm not going to throw up in your car," Buffy said with a touch more confidence than she felt.

"That's right, you're not," Spike said. He stroked the dashboard like he was caressing a lover.

Great. Now she really _was _going to be sick. Buffy subsided into a sulky silence, which was easily filled by Dawn's chattering. Her earlier mood had dissipated quickly, and she'd wasted no time in claiming the front seat as her rightful spot for the ride to school. Not that Buffy wanted to sit up front.

"Oh, Spike!" Dawn said excitedly. Buffy scoffed quietly. She'd lost track of how many times Dawn had said 'Oh, Spike' in that same tone over the past five minutes. She was going to sit her little sister down later and explain exactly why it wasn't okay to be all googly-eyed over the annoying neighbor. As soon as her head didn't feel like it was going to fall off. Or explode.

Then what Dawn was saying began to penetrate the fog surrounding her brain.

"Look, I got my paper back." Dawn dug through her back pack and retrieved a crumpled wad of papers. She flipped through them and extracted the one she was looking for.

"'S that the one on the sonnets?" Spike asked.

_Sonnets?_

"Yeah," Dawn said. "See, I got a B-plus." She waved the paper in front of Spike's face. "And the teacher wrote, 'Excellent work.'"

"Good for you," Spike said. He smiled warmly at her.

"Well, I couldn't have done it without your help," Dawn said modestly.

"Ah, you were doing fine," Spike protested. "Just needed a little nudge in the right direction, is all."

Buffy leaned forward, ignoring the objections her guts had about that move. "Wait. You're—helping my sister with her homework?"

Dawn and Spike exchanged an amused glance. "Yeah, Spike's really good at English and History," Dawn said. "What'd you think? I was just hanging out at his house to watch _True Blood_?" She quailed a little at the look Buffy gave her. "Um, because I wasn't. Watching _True Blood. _Because I know I'm not allowed."

Spike laughed. "Right. And when you're not allowed to do something, that stops you." He gave Dawn a sidelong look. "Don't think we're not gonna have a talk about you forgetting to tell me what big sis' rules are."

Dawn blushed and gave Spike a look of such pure teenage hero-worship that Buffy felt embarrassed for her. "Sorry?" she squeaked. "But ... but it's okay, right?" She looked over her shoulder at Buffy. "I can hang out with Spike sometimes, can't I, Buffy?"

Buffy sighed and sat back. "We'll talk about it later, Dawnie," she said.

"But-"

"I said, later." _Sometime when __**he's**_ _not looking at me with that stupid smirk. Serve him right if I did throw up all over his 'baby.'_

"Aw, c'mon, Buffy," Dawn whined. The sound grated against Buffy's overly sensitive ears.

"You heard your sister," Spike said firmly.

"Fine," Dawn said with just the barest hint of a pout.

The remainder of the ride was spent in silence on Buffy's part. She half-listened to Spike and Dawn's rousing game of 'bash each other's musical taste.' By the time they pulled up in front of Dawn's school, she was ready to yank the stereo right out of the dash. Her head was throbbing in time to the latest musical travesty. At least now it was one of Dawn's perky teen idols, which was marginally better than the punk rock Spike insisted on blaring way too loudly.

"Thanks for the ride, Spike," Dawn said. She took her time getting out of the car; she looked almost disappointed that the first bell had rung already, and no one was around to witness her arrival.

"I'll pick you up after school," Buffy reminded her.

Dawn paused in the act of cramming her papers back into her back pack. "Um, no, I was gonna go to Janice's again today. Science project, remember?"

Buffy nodded. Then she made a mental note to keep her head as still as possible for the foreseeable future. "Do you need a ride from her house later?"

"No, her brother can bring me home when we're done." Dawn's cheeks flushed as she spoke.

"You and Janice _are _going to be at her house after school, right?" she asked suspiciously. "Actually doing homework?"

Dawn ignored the question, rather gracing Spike with one last smile before she got out of the car. "Bye," she said. "Thanks again, Spike!" She slung her bag over one shoulder, tossed her long hair back, and hurried up the steps to the school.

The car felt oppressively still without Dawn's bubbly presence. Spike clicked off the radio. The silence was almost a physical thing between them. Then he turned and looked at her, too-familiar smirk firmly in place.

"You planning to come up here, or you wanna stay back there and pretend I'm your chauffeur?" Buffy hesitated for a moment, and Spike let out an exaggerated sigh. "I don't bite," he said. Then, with a leer, he added, "'Less you ask real nice."

"You're a pig, Spike." There was little venom in her statement, however, and she slid out of the back seat to take the place vacated by Dawn.

* * *

><p>"Uh, you know the Bronze is the other way, right?" Buffy said.<p>

Spike shrugged. "How're you feeling?"

She stared at him for a minute before answering. "I'm not going to throw up, if that's what you mean," she said finally. "You don't have to worry about your precious car."

"That's not what I meant, but good to know." Spike reached into his jacket pocket for his smokes. "You mind?" he asked, nodding toward the pack.

Buffy crinkled up her nose. She looked sort of adora—Spike halted that train of thought right in its tracks. Her twitchy nose was rabbity, not cute in the slightest. The fact she'd been on his mind last night didn't mean a thing. Spike reminded himself of all the annoying things she'd done since she'd moved in next door, starting with punching him the first time they'd met. She might be looking all sorts of vulnerable this morning with the baggy clothes—and it wasn't fair she should look that appealing with no makeup and her hair such a mess—but he knew that was just a cover. Underneath it all she was a cold-hearted little bitch.

Right.

Spike stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it, not waiting for approval from his passenger. It was his car, his rules. He'd smoke if he wanted to, and he couldn't care less what she thought. He rolled down his window, though. Wouldn't do to smoke her out on the off chance it'd make her sick.

"Where are we going?" Buffy's screechy voice broke into Spike's thoughts.

"We're gonna get something to eat," he said, and turned the car into a small parking lot in front of a dilapidated building. The neon sign in the window read "Dot's." The "o" was burnt out.

"What?" Buffy glared at him. "Okay, first of all, I don't want to go out to eat with you. Second ... If you think I'm going to eat at this—this hole in the wall, you are so mistaken." She eyed the diner doubtfully, taking in the peeling paint on the building and the grimy windows. "It looks totally gross."

Spike flipped down the visor in front of her. "Yeah, well, you should fit right in," he said, pointing at her reflection in the mirror. Buffy looked from the mirror to Spike. Her lip quivered slightly. Dammit, he was _not _going to apologize. He didn't care how big and sad she made her eyes look. "Fuck," he muttered when she wouldn't stop looking at him like that. "Didn't mean it like that, pet. You're—" Nope, couldn't do it. Wasn't going to say sorry, certainly wasn't going to tell her how much he wouldn't mind peeling off those ratty sweats and shagging her rotten. Not like she'd appreciate the sentiment if he did. "Just get your arse out of the car and let me buy you breakfast."

"I suppose this is you trying to be 'neighborly' again?" Buffy ground out between gritted teeth. "Anyone ever tell you your manners need some work?"

"Something we've got in common, isn't it, love?"

They stared at each other, neither one willing to budge.

"Suit yourself," Spike said finally. "You can sulk in the car if you want, but I'm gonna get some grub. Just thought we could talk, all civilized-like, now you're not drunk. 'Sides, you'll feel better with food in your belly," he promised. He killed the engine and hopped out of the car. He was halfway to the door before he realized Buffy hadn't moved from her seat. He turned back to the vehicle and opened the passenger door.

"C'mon, princess."

Buffy didn't respond beyond giving him a dirty look, but she did deign to get out of the car. Spike watched as she trudged toward the diner. He considered the miserable slump of her shoulders for the barest second before reaching back into the car and retrieving his flask from the glove box.

"Well, hey, Spike," the pretty brunette waitress greeted him when they entered. "Haven't seen you for awhile."

"'Lo, Janie," Spike answered with a smile. He took Buffy's elbow, ignoring the look she gave him, and steered her toward his favorite booth in the back corner of the diner. Janie trailed them to the table and looked expectantly at Spike as he sat down.

"The usual?" she asked.

"Yeah, and the same for the lady," he said. Buffy opened her mouth, anger coloring her cheeks, but Spike rolled on over her objections. "Oh, and the makings for a Red Eye."

Janie took his order, an amused grin on her lips. "Be right back, sweetie," she said, and walked away from the table. Spike watched her go, appreciatively eyeing the sway of her hips beneath her peach rayon skirt.

"What the hell was that?" Buffy demanded once the waitress was out of earshot.

"What?" Spike said, feigning innocence. "Told you, I'm buying you breakfast."

"So you get to tell me what I'm going to eat?" Buffy folded her arms across her chest and scowled at him. "You're a jerk, you know that?"

"Yeah, think you mentioned something about that last night." He smirked at her. "Wanna talk about anything else you said last night?"

Buffy opened her mouth for what he was sure was going to be some bitchy remark, but just then a waitress sailed by with a tray full of food. Buffy turned a little green as the aroma of sausage and eggs wafted across their table, and she quickly clamped her mouth shut.

Spike chuckled quietly. "You okay, kitten?"

"I have a name," Buffy said.

"Yeah, I know. Just happens to be a silly one." Then, though he knew he shouldn't, he added, "Bitsy."

Buffy slammed her hands on the table hard enough to rattle the silverware. She winced and looked like she deeply regretted the move. "That's it," she snarled. "This is— Why I thought you could act like an adult—" She slid to the edge of the booth.

Spike stopped her with a hand on her forearm. "Hey. Sit down." He could see the tension in the set of her jaw; he could practically hear her grinding her teeth. "What're you gonna do?" he said, lowering his voice. "Walk out of here and slog the three miles to get your car because you can't take a joke?"

Buffy looked at him, then down to where his hand curled around her arm. It was only then Spike realized he was tracing a gentle circle against her wrist. He could feel the steady thrum of her pulse beneath his thumb. Buffy raised her eyes to his, and a charge went through him.

The moment was broken when Janie appeared at their booth, a tray balanced on one hand and a black plastic coffee carafe in the other. She set the carafe on the table between them, and Spike drew his hand away from Buffy's arm.

Janie chattered familiarly as she set coffee mugs in front of them, followed by a jar of Tabasco sauce, a large glass filled about quarter way with orange juice, and an egg. "Your breakfast'll be ready in a few minutes," she said.

Spike swore she put a little extra swing in her step as he watched her walk away this time.

He looked back to find Buffy glaring at him. Again.

"What?"

"I can take a joke," Buffy said.

"Sure you can," he said, concentrating on the ingredients in front of him.

Buffy watched with a look of growing horror as Spike cracked the egg into the glass of orange juice, then topped it off with coffee, a healthy splash of hot sauce, and some pepper. He pulled out his flask and added a shot of whiskey before stirring the mixture well. "Eww," she said. "Please tell me you're not really going to drink that."

"'Course not," Spike said. He pushed it across the table toward her. "You are."

"Oh, so many shades of no." Buffy pushed it back towards him.

"You'll feel better," he said. "Trust me."

"Really, really don't," Buffy said. "And I'm not drinking your disgusting concoction."

Spike shrugged. "Suit yourself. Just thought I'd—"

"Be helpful?" Buffy suggested. "Yeah, I got the memo. Maybe I don't like your brand of helpful. Speaking of which, what is up with Dawn and her homework? Why do you want a fourteen year old girl hanging around your house, anyway?"

"I'm not— Look, she's home alone every afternoon. She's a good kid, but she seems a little lonely." Spike poured a cup of coffee for himself. "Want some?" he asked. Buffy nodded, and he filled her mug as well. He watched as she proceeded to dump three creamers and four packets of sugar into the coffee. "If you don't want me having her over, I won't. But you can't expect me to just know what your rules are if you don't talk to me."

"I shouldn't have to talk to you. We're neighbors; we happen to live next to each other—we're not friends. You're not Dawn's babysitter or big brother or whatever. We're not going to be buddies."

"'Good fences make good neighbors,'" Spike murmured. "Fine, that's the way you want it, pet, that's the way it'll be."

"Good," Buffy said. "And just so you know, Dawn's grounded until further notice. She needs ... She has to have boundaries. She can't lie to me and go behind my back and still get to do whatever she feels like." She sighed. "Maybe this way she'll get her chores done for a change."

Spike took a drink of his coffee and considered Buffy over the rim of the mug. She had a thousand-yard stare and looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with being hungover. He wondered what she'd look like without that frown on her face. Not that he was likely to be getting smiles from her anytime soon. Spike set his mug down and cleared his throat. "You know, Dawn said— That first day, she said you don't know where your father is. That true?"

"Dawn talks too much," Buffy said shortly. Her hands curled into tight little fists.

"Hey, not tryin' to pry into your business," Spike said. "Just— She's alone a lot, yeah? You work most afternoons. If you need someone to keep an eye on her, make sure she's not getting into trouble—"

Buffy let out a snort of laughter. "No. You can just keep your eyes off my sister."

Spike clenched his jaw and nodded. "Right." Was for the best, really. Last thing he needed was some little girl with an inappropriate crush hanging about making moon eyes at him. They sat in awkward silence for the next few minutes, until Janie approached their table again with a tray full of food. Spike watched with amusement as Buffy's eyes widened at the sight of the breakfast platter in front of her—short stack of pancakes, mushroom and cheese omelet, hash browns, and bacon. She was looking a little green around the gills again.

Buffy swallowed hard and raised her eyes to Spike's. "Will that, uh, really help?" she asked, gesturing to the hangover cure.

"Scout's honor," he said, and took a large bite of omelet.

Buffy reached for the glass. "It's not gonna kill me?"

"I've tried it myself—more than once—and I'm still here."

"Too bad," Buffy said. She raised the glass and took a tentative sip. "Oh, eww!"

Spike laughed at her expression. "Hold your breath and swallow," Spike advised. "It'll be over before you know it."

Buffy took a deep breath before tipping the glass back. Spike watched the muscles in her throat as she downed half the glass in one swallow. Then he jerked his gaze away. "Now, how'd I know you'd have that trick down pat?"

Buffy sputtered a little at that. "I really, really hate you," she said when she caught her breath.

"Mutual, pet," Spike said. He reached for the Tabasco jar and liberally coated his eggs and potatoes with hot sauce. "Now eat up, and let's get you home."

* * *

><p>Buffy slammed the glass down on the table. She wasn't about to tell Spike so, but the huge glass of disgusting-ness was actually settling her stomach.<p>

"Why do you always have to be such a—"

"Jerk? Pig? Billy Idol wannabe?" Spike filled in for her. Buffy avoided his too-direct gaze; he looked amused—as much as he had the night before, at least. She shifted uncomfortably on the bench seat as the things she had said last night ran through her mind. "I dunno, love. Why d'you have to be such a bitch?"

"I'm ... I'm not!" she said. She hated the guilt that niggled at her. God, she really _was_ a bitch, with the slapping and the nipple-ring tugging. Color bloomed in her cheeks. _I am never drinking again_, Buffy vowed silently, eyes fixed firmly on her plate. "I was drunk last night. I said a lot of things I didn't ... I mean, I wouldn't ever say those things if—"

"If you'd been sober, right. Doesn't mean you're not thinking 'em, though, does it? Just means you didn't have the guts to say 'em without a little Dutch courage. Though, gotta say, considering what you've said to me sober, I'm surprised you'd need to get a little drink in you before spouting off."

"Well, why'd you kiss me?" Buffy demanded. The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. Why, oh why, did she have to bring _that _up? Her only consolation was that Spike looked just as uncomfortable at the question as she felt asking it.

"Shut you up, didn't it?" he said, after a long, awkward moment.

Buffy sighed and took a tentative bite of her hash browns. When that stayed down, she took another bite and then started on the omelet. "So that wasn't because you— I mean, you don't— you don't, like, _like _me or anything. Right?"

Spike coughed. "No," he said. "No, no, I don't ... no."

"Okay," Buffy said. "I get it. Don't give yourself a coronary." Not that she wanted him to like her, but he didn't have to be so ... emphatic about it. They ate in silence for a few minutes. Finally curiosity got the better of her again. "It's just ... you, um, you didn't have to drive me home last night, and then you—" Buffy bit her tongue before she could bring up the kiss again. Because thinking about him kissing her led to thinking of other things he had done last night, and she absolutely was not thinking about those things. "I mean, if I were you, I would not have taken my sister to school this morning, and I wouldn't be taking me out to breakfast and ... and making really disgusting hangover remedies. And now I'm not sure if that was you being nice to me or getting back at me for slapping you."

Spike chuckled. "You feel better, don't you?" he asked. He nodded towards her plate. Buffy glanced down and realized with surprise she'd demolished half her omelet without even noticing.

"Uh, yeah, guess I do," Buffy admitted reluctantly. "That was you being nice, huh?"

Spike shrugged one shoulder. "If you say so."

Buffy poured syrup over her pancakes. "What is it you do, anyway?" she asked. "I mean, do you have a job?"

"I'm a writer," Spike said.

"Oh." That was not what she'd expected. Bartender, maybe, or lead singer in some punk rock band—and her brain helpfully supplied her with an image of a shirtless Spike in tight leather pants screaming into a microphone. She shook her head to clear it of that vision. "Uh, what … what have you written?"

He looked at her, amusement plain on his face. "Nothing you've read, I'm sure," he said. "Unless you like graphic novels?"

Buffy shook her head. "No, not really." She was sure if she told him her reading habits ran more towards magazines, he'd have some smart-ass remark. "Um, but Xander would. Probably. Those are comic books, right?"

Spike made a face like he'd just bitten into a lemon. "Not exactly," he said. "But don't worry about it."

Something about the way he said that made Buffy bristle—most likely the implied 'you silly little girl' at the end of his statement. She stabbed her fork violently into her omelet and scowled at her plate. Then another question occurred to her. "What's your name?" she asked.

Spike stared at her. "Are you daft?"

Buffy sighed. "Your _real _name. You know, what it says on your driver's license?"

"Spike."

Buffy laid her silverware down and folded her arms across her chest. "Really."

"Yeah, _really_."

"You're telling me your mother looked at a helpless baby and said, 'I'm going to name him Spike'?"

"That's a different question altogether, pet," Spike said with a slow smile. "You asked what it says on my driver's license, and that's 'Spike Williams.' As for what my mum named me, well, that's none of your business. We're not friends, remember?"

"Fine. I don't wanna know anyway." Buffy slumped back in her seat and picked idly at the remains of her breakfast. She was determined to get through the rest of this meal and then never, ever talk to her neighbor again.


	8. Chapter 8

_Beta'd by KnifeEdge and Ryn. Huge thanks to Puddinhead for additional feedback and encouragement._

* * *

><p>"Hey, Spike. What've you been up to? I haven't seen you in, like, weeks."<p>

Spike closed the car door and looked over the DeSoto to where Dawn was standing next to the Land Rover. She gave him a bright smile and a cheerful wave as he headed towards her. He glanced around for any sign of the not-so-pleasant Summers sister. Buffy was nowhere to be seen, and he returned Dawn's smile. "Been busy," he said. "How're you doing, Dawn?"

Dawn shrugged and the smile slipped a little. "Okay, I guess." She kicked at the rear tire of the SUV. "I'm still grounded. That's super lame."

Spike nodded. He'd seen her around, of course, but he'd been keeping to himself, not wanting to rock the boat and hack off the blonde menace next door. The whole situation was starting to irritate the hell out of him. Was his own fault, though, for sticking his nose where it didn't belong.

"Well, you take care, Dawn." Spike turned to go into his house. Then he remembered something. "You gonna be here for a minute? I've got something for you." Dawn nodded, and he didn't miss the way her face lit up at his words.

Spike rummaged through the collection of papers, writing utensils, and computer disks that littered the kitchen table. His hand closed on a slim, purple jewel case that held an unmarked CD. He grabbed a Sharpie and scrawled a few words on the disc.

Spike gave a mental groan when he saw Buffy standing with Dawn upon his return. "Morning," he said. Didn't hurt to be polite, even if it was wasted effort. Buffy ignored him-much as she had every time she'd seen him since their breakfast together-and got into the car. Which suited him just fine as the Doublemeat Palace uniform she was sporting was god-awful, and the less he saw of it the better.

"Come on, Dawnie. We're going to be late."

Dawn flashed an expressive look at him. Spike imagined she meant 'Sorry my sister's such a bloody bitch.'

He might have been projecting just a touch.

"Here you go," he said, and held the disc out to her. "Told you I'd get you some good music."

Dawn took it with another bright smile. "Thanks! I can't wait to listen to it!"

Spike grinned and dared a glance at Buffy. She sat stiffly in the driver's seat, very carefully not looking at him or Dawn. "No time like the present, right?" he said quietly.

The girl grinned back at him. "Right." She waved good-bye as she ran around the vehicle and climbed into the passenger seat.

Spike leaned against the fence and lit a cigarette. He could hear Buffy haranguing Dawn as the younger girl fiddled with the radio. "That's my girl," he murmured, when the sounds of The Ramones drifted from the open window.

_Now I wanna sniff some glue_  
><em>Now I wanna have somethin' to do.<em>

He tapped his foot in time to the music and smoked his cigarette. Buffy shot him a deadly glare as she backed down the driveway in a rush. Spike didn't bother to suppress his responding smirk.

Then the wrenching sound of metal squealing against metal tore through the quiet morning. Spike looked up to see the Land Rover's rear bumper embedded in the front grill of his DeSoto. "Bloody buggering fuck!" He pitched his cigarette away and rushed down the driveway.

Buffy looked up at him, shock written plain on her ashen face. Her eyes were huge as they met his. Then she reached for the gear shift, put her classic-mangling death trap into drive, and peeled away with screeching tires. Spike saw Dawn swivel around in her seat; he briefly caught the flash of sympathy in her eyes as the car sped down the block.

"You ... you bloody cunt!" he hollered at the receding taillights. It was a good thing Buffy'd taken off because at the moment, he would gladly have strangled her with her own stupid hair. Spike turned to look at his car. "What'd that bitch do to you?" He crouched down to examine the damage; on first inspection, it looked to be mostly cosmetic. Spike sighed heavily and trudged around his house to the garage, muttering imprecations against Buffy Summers under his breath.

* * *

><p>Dawn stared in disbelief as Buffy drove away from the scene of her crime. After only a few blocks, Buffy pulled to the side of the road and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," she muttered.<p>

Dawn could see the way Buffy's hands trembled, and she felt a sudden wave of sympathy for her sister. She remembered the time she'd been in an accident with her mom, back when they lived in L.A. It was scary, but that didn't mean Buffy should have just ... run away.

"I can't believe you did that!" Dawn said. "You have to go back and-"

"No!" Buffy said. "No, you're ... you're going to be late for school."

Dawn gave a little snort of laughter. That was the lamest excuse she'd ever heard. "I don't care. Buffy, you have to talk to Spike! You just, like, killed his car. Do you know how much he loves that car?"

Buffy took a deep, shuddering breath and nodded slowly. "I know," she whispered. "But I can't. Not-" Then, to Dawn's great surprise, she started crying. Buffy was quiet about it, but those were definitely tears tracking down her flushed cheeks.

Dawn wasn't sure what to do. Buffy cried so rarely; even at their mother's funeral, Buffy'd been sad, yeah, but very ... stoic. If she'd shed any tears, she'd done it in private. Maybe that was why Dawn was so unnerved by the sight of Buffy crying now.

"Buffy?" Dawn said hesitantly. "Are you okay?" She reached over and patted Buffy's hand where it clenched around the steering wheel.

Buffy turned and looked at her with a 'duh' expression. "No, Dawn, I'm not okay." She sat up and wiped her face. "Oh, shit," she said again. "How am I supposed to afford this?"

Dawn pulled her hand back. Just when she'd thought Buffy was being, you know, _human_ for a change, she went and proved otherwise. "_That's _what you're worried about? Money? Don't you care at all how Spike feels?"

Buffy sniffled. "Of course I care, Dawnie! God, he probably thinks I did it on purpose."

Dawn raised an eyebrow at that. "I'm sure he knows you're just a terrible driver." She couldn't help but laugh at the stunned expression on Buffy's face. "Oh, come on. The day we moved in, you almost ran _me _over. Hello, that's a huge clue right there."

Buffy smiled through the last of her tears. "Yeah, I guess." She sighed and stared blankly at some point in the distance. Dawn waited for Buffy to look at her or to say something, but she just went on staring with that empty look on her face. Finally Buffy shook herself and put the car in drive.

"Are you going to talk to Spike?"

Buffy glanced at Dawn quickly, then back at the road. "I ... yeah. I have to, right? Just ... not right now. You need to get to school, and I can't just skip work."

"I know that," Dawn said. She sat quietly for a minute, gnawing on her bottom lip. "Maybe, uh, maybe Dad could-"

"Could what, Dawn?" Buffy's words were bitter.

Dawn shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't know. I just thought, if we called and told him we needed help ..." She trailed off. Right. Stupid idea. If he was going to help them, he would have done it already. Dawn swallowed against the lump that formed in her throat. Until this very moment, she'd had this thought-fantasy-that her dad was ... maybe being held captive somewhere, but fighting desperately all the time to get back to his girls. "He's not ever coming back, is he?"

Buffy shook her head slowly. "Dawn, you ... do you miss him a lot?"

They reached the school before Dawn felt ready to answer that question. "No, not like I miss Mom, you know? Because he's been gone for a long time. Even when we were all at home together, it was like he wasn't really there."

"Yeah," Buffy agreed. "I know."

They were both still for a moment, then Dawn reached for her back pack. "I better go. Don't wanna be late."

"Okay. I'll see you at home later." Buffy smiled-a little sadly, Dawn thought. She slung her bag over one shoulder and opened the car door. Just as she was getting out, Buffy grabbed hold of her arm. "Dawn, uh, if you want to go to Janice's or anything ... well, you can be done being grounded, all right? Just, please, stay out of trouble."

Dawn looked over her shoulder, grinning widely. "Really?"

"Yes, really."

Dawn hopped out of the car. "Thanks," she said. Almost as an afterthought, she added, shyly, "I love you."

Buffy's smile widened and looked more sincere. "I love you, too, Dawnie."

* * *

><p>Buffy dropped a basket of fries into the deep-fryer and thought about Spike, and the way she'd felt the collision with his car vibrate through her entire body, and the balance in her checking account. She mentally added and subtracted numbers, but couldn't come up with any way to make them work out in a way that meant Dawn would still get three meals a day. Not if she had to cover the cost of repairing Spike's car. <em>His baby<em>, she thought, a little despairingly. She had to offer, she knew that. Maybe insurance? But no, even if she used her insurance policy to pay for it, her premium would go up, and she was right back to not being able to pay for something else.

The smell of something burning distracted Buffy from her thoughts. She looked down at the deep-fryer in dismay and realized she'd forgotten to set the timer for the fries. "Crap," she muttered and pulled the basket out of the hot oil.

"Is everything okay?"

Buffy looked up to see Gary, the one person who'd been nice to her on her first day and so was her favorite co-worker, watching her from his station at the grill. "Yeah, I'm fine." She dropped a fresh basket of fries, making doubly sure to punch the button that set the timer to two minutes.

"You're sure? Because that's the second batch of fries you've killed in the past half-hour." Gary flipped the burgers expertly before looking at her again. "Better watch it with that, or Manny'll make you pay for them."

Buffy peeked around the fry station to confirm that Manny was safely ensconced in his office. She turned back to Gary with a grimace. "I had a car accident this morning," she said. "My neighbor has this classic car, and I backed right into it. I'm ... I'm sort of a really bad driver." Some of the tension drained from Buffy's shoulders at this confession. Maybe if she said the words to someone, she could get the scene to stop replaying itself in her head. She just had to get out the worst part of what she'd done. "And I just ... drove away." Her voice was hushed, and she wasn't sure Gary could even hear her. "I didn't apologize or ... or anything."

"And it's bugging you." Gary's voice was quiet, too. Then the conciliatory look went out of his eyes, and he turned to the uniform beef patties sizzling on the grill. Buffy knew the change in his demeanor meant Manny was on the prowl. She hurried to dispose of the ruined fries before he could catch her.

She didn't quite make it. Manny stood next to the garbage can, his myopic gaze trained on the mess of greasy black strips. "Is there a problem with the fryer?" he asked. His tone made it plain he knew there wasn't.

Buffy glanced over at Gary, hoping for some clue as to the best way to handle their boss. She knew telling Manny she'd been less than vigilant was not going to fly.

"The temperature was set too high," Gary lied. Buffy flashed him a grateful smile. "We've got it taken care of now." As if to prove his point, the timer shrilled at that moment, and Buffy retrieved the basket of perfectly golden fries.

Manny fixed them both with a measuring stare. "Well, see that it doesn't happen again. Inattention to your equipment is the same as stealing directly from the company."

Buffy nodded solemnly, then stuck her tongue out at Manny's back as he moved to patrol the service counter. "Thanks," she said to Gary once Manny was out of earshot.

Gary shrugged. "No problem." He arrayed a fresh batch of burgers on the grill. "You know, Sophie's looking for some extra hours. You could take the rest of the day off, take care of that thing with your neighbor."

Buffy nodded, considering. She'd worked overtime three days already this week, so taking a day off wasn't going to kill her paycheck. "That's not a bad idea," she said. "I'll give her a call."

Sophie was more than happy to cover for her, and Buffy mentally adjusted her 'co-workers who don't suck' list so Sophie was right up there next to Gary. Okay, so they were the only two names on that list. That didn't mean she didn't appreciate the gesture.

Buffy clocked out with a sigh of relief and yanked her awful chicken-cow hat off as she walked into the parking lot. She eyed the back of her Land Rover. _That doesn't look so bad._There were a few scratches, and a streak of black paint marred the trailer hitch. There was small dent in the bumper, too. But if she hadn't been looking for it, she might not have even noticed the minor damage. Maybe Spike's car had gotten off just as easily. That thought put a little spring her step, and Buffy drove home feeling more at ease than she had all morning.

Spike's car wasn't in its normal spot in front of his house. Buffy didn't see it or Spike anywhere when she pulled into the driveway. She killed the engine and tapped her fingers nervously on the steering wheel. Maybe he was asleep. He seemed pretty ... nocturnal, always coming home in the morning, and then blaring his music till all hours of the night. Buffy decided she'd take a shower and change before going to talk to him. She didn't want to wake him up any earlier than she had to; she knew from experience that was a recipe for a grumpy neighbor.

Once inside her house, Buffy dared a peek through the window with the view of Spike's room. The big bed was empty, though the dark red sheets were rumpled. Oh, and there went her stupid brain again, supplying her with the image of Spike's pale, muscled form stretched out against those sheets- Buffy dropped the blinds and backed away from the window.

Okay, not sleeping then.

Buffy enjoyed a leisurely shower and then took the time to blow-dry and style her hair-because it was nice to feel girly once in a while, not because she was procrastinating the inevitable talk with Spike. After she finished up in the bathroom, she strolled into her room and stood in front of the closet. What said 'I'm sorry' and 'please don't make me pay an arm and leg for your car'? Buffy toyed with the notion of wearing something skimpy that would appeal to Spike's inner pig. Then she dismissed that idea and pulled on the first thing that came to hand. It was just coincidence that the first thing she grabbed was a cute little sundress. Of course, then she had to find a cute pair of sandals to go with the sundress.

Finally Buffy ran out of things to do. She couldn't put this off any longer. She took a deep breath, ran her fingers through her carefully constructed curls, and stepped out of her house. "Okay, you can do this," she told herself as she walked across the lawn. "Just remember not to hit him. No matter what."

Buffy stood on Spike's doorstep. Her heart hammered in her chest as she pressed the doorbell. She could hear the chime echoing through the house. After a full minute-she counted-she rang the doorbell again. Still nothing. Buffy scowled at the door. She'd come to apologize, dammit, the least Spike could do was _be here _to get apologized to. She turned to head home. She could always come back later. Maybe after Dawn got home. He wouldn't be mean to her if Dawn was there, right? Well, yeah, he probably would.

Just as Buffy stepped off the front step, she heard a warbling, discordant voice backed up by a steady guitar rhythm. She recognized the song as one of Frank Sinatra's-her mother had had all his albums. But Old Blue Eyes had never sounded this ... angry and unharmonious. Buffy winced at a particularly sour note. At least now she had a clue to Spike's location. Buffy followed the noise around the house and into the garage, where his big black car was parked.

Buffy took in the damage done to his car. So much for her hopes that the damage had been minimal. No wonder he'd looked so angry this morning. She supposed he would have been upset regardless of how badly she'd wrecked his car, but this ... it looked just terrible. The passenger side headlight dangled from its socket, and the chrome trim on that side of the car was missing. The hood was dented in in the center, and the hood ornament was gone altogether. Buffy walked closer to the vehicle. She didn't see Spike anywhere, but there were tools spread out on the cement in front of the car, so she figured he was around.

"Hello?" she said in the pause between songs. Buffy heard a squeak and rattle. She turned to see Spike roll out from beneath the car on one of those wheel-y things guys used to work under cars. He glared at her from his position on the floor. Oh, crap. This was not going to be easy.

"Um, hi." Buffy smiled tentatively.

Spike levered himself off the ground and reached for a rag to wipe his greasy hands. He was dressed in a pair of black jeans and a black tank top. Buffy gulped. _Why, hello, muscles. _There was a smear of grease along his collar bone and another streak down his right bicep.

"What d'you want? Come to finish the job?" Spike tossed the rag down on the workbench that ran along the wall of the garage and then turned off the music. Buffy was momentarily grateful for the ensuing quiet. That was, until Spike turned back to her with angry eyes, and the silence became almost unbearable.

"I wanted to say, uh, I'm sorry?"

"That a question? 'Cause if you're asking me if you should apologize, the answer's yes." Spike leaned back against the workbench and crossed his arms, which did nice things to his really kind of impressive muscles. Buffy closed her eyes. That was a mistake-the Spike in her head refused to wear a shirt. Her eyes popped open again.

"I'm sorry! Okay?" Oops. Probably shouldn't be yelling at the man with the injured car. "I mean ... I'm really sorry I hit your car, Spike."

"Wanna give me one good reason why I shouldn't call the police?"

Buffy's jaw dropped. "The ... are you serious?"

Spike shrugged. "You know hit and run is a crime, right, pet?"

"Hit and run-! Well, you know, maybe if I hadn't been distracted by the incredibly inappropriate song about _doing drugs _on the CD you made for my fourteen-year-old-sister, I wouldn't have …"

"Oh, so it's my fault now, is it?" Spike pushed off the workbench and took a step forward. Buffy backed up. "That's bloody rich, you-"

"No, it's not your fault!" Buffy interrupted. She really shouldn't say words. It was just making the situation worse. "I … look, I panicked, and I know I shouldn't have taken off like that, but I'm here now, and I'm really sorry, and ... is it really bad? It kind of looks really bad." _Okay, breathe_, Buffy reminded herself. "We don't have to get the police involved, do we?" She looked at Spike. She might have batted her eyelashes and crossed her arms to amp up the cleavage.

She wasn't proud of herself.

Unfortunately Spike remained immune to her charms. If anything, her display only served to make him angrier. "D'you have any idea how much work I've put into this car? You got any idea how much it's going to take to get her looking the way she's supposed to?"

"She? Your car's a girl?"

"Of course," Spike said. He ran a possessive hand along the side panel of the car. "Told you, she's my baby." He glared at Buffy again. "Would rather you'd just thrown up in her if you were so dead set on-"

"I didn't do it on purpose!" Buffy wailed. "I ... I know I'm an awful driver, everyone tells me that, and I'm sorry, but I was in a hurry and sometimes I'm not very good at backing up and, and ... I'll pay for it if you want, but can we do a payment plan because, because-" She wanted to explain about all the bills she had to pay and how hard it was to keep going to the Doublemeat every day and how much she worried about being able to provide for Dawn. But he wouldn't care about all that. Not the way he was scowling at her and thinking she had run into his precious car just to ... get back at him or something. All the things she wanted to say but couldn't stuck in her throat, and suddenly her breath was coming in huge, uncontrollable gasps.

"Bollocks," she heard Spike mutter. Then his hand was on her shoulder. Buffy let him push her into the driver's seat, unable to catch her breath long enough to formulate a protest. There were iron bars around her chest; every breath was a struggle. A painful struggle. She was only vaguely conscious of Spike kneeling on the floor in front of her. His hands slid up her thighs until he held her hips in a firm grasp. _That _breached her awareness. His touch shivered along her nerve endings. It felt proprietary, an echo of the way he'd stroked his car.

"Look at me, love." Spike's deep voice rumbled through her, and Buffy was helpless to do anything but obey. She fixed wild eyes on his cool, blue gaze. He nodded slightly. "Good." Buffy thought she should push him away-he had insinuated himself between her legs, and his elbows pressed against her bare knees-but she was frozen in place. She dragged in another rasping, gasping breath and wondered if she was going to suffocate. She felt like she would.

Spike moved his hands to her arms. The palms were ticklish-rough against her skin as he gently stroked her arms up and down, up and down. "Gotta slow your breathing," Spike instructed. "Breathe with me, now, okay? Deep breath in through your nose." His nostrils flared as he demonstrated. "Now out through your mouth." Spike pursed his lips and exhaled, and his warm breath fanned against her throat. She concentrated on his voice and mouth as he repeated, slowly, "In. And out." His hands continued to move on her arms in rhythm with his words and breathing.

Finally her breathing evened out. Buffy took a shaky breath that didn't make her chest ache, and some of the panic melted away. She was suddenly intensely aware of Spike's proximity. His blue eyes blazed up at her. Buffy realized with a start that despite his gentle demeanor and the way he'd so calmly talked her down, he was still furious with her. _What the hell must he think of me?_

* * *

><p>Spike watched Buffy for a long moment; his hands were still now, cupped around her elbows. When he was assured that her breathing was under control, he released her and sat back on his heels. He didn't feel altogether safe touching her-big green eyes and that vulnerable look aside, he still sort of wanted to throttle her for what she'd done.<p>

As if wrecking his car weren't enough, she had the balls to show up in a skimpy dress and try to flirt her way out of taking responsibility. Spike dragged his eyes over her and revelled in the way she blushed at his perusal of her body. _Don't put the bloody wares on display if you don't like a bloke taking a gander_, he thought. He stood up abruptly with a muffled curse. It didn't mean a thing that he was tempted to drive his fingers into her long, golden curls, to hold her head still so he could kiss her senseless. Simply meant she was a pretty girl, and he'd been too long with naught but his hand for company.

Spike growled and turned toward his workbench. He pressed play on his iPod, and Johnny Rotten's voice burst through the speakers.

_There's a problem, problem,_  
><em>Problem, the problem is you.<em>

Yeah, that about summed it up. Spike looked back at Buffy. She was still in the car, watching him with wide eyes. Her fingers twisted together in her lap. She looked scared; for some reason, that got his dander up.

"Don't look at me like that! I'm not gonna bite, you know."

Buffy jumped visibly at his harsh tone. "I'm sorry," she said. How many times did that make now? And here he'd been thinking those were two words she didn't know-or at least not to string together.

"Yeah, heard you the first time, sweetheart. But 'sorry' doesn't put my car back to rights." He scowled at her and pointedly ignored the way her lower lip trembled.

"I ... I said I'd pay for it," Buffy said. "I just can't afford it all at once."

"And how much do you reckon you owe me?"

Buffy shrugged her shoulders and glanced at him. "I don't know. Um, a couple hundred dollars?"

Spike laughed. "Try again." He reached for the mangled hood ornament he'd picked up off the street earlier. "You know how much this piece runs?" Buffy shook her head. "Two hundred dollars, easy. Closer to four hundred to replace the headlight bezel. And then you gotta consider all the trim you managed to rip off, and that big fucking dent I'm going to have to hammer out. I'm guessing by the time it's all said and done, your tab's going to be closer to two grand."

Buffy mouthed his last words silently. Spike took a mean pleasure from the stunned look on her face. "That's parts alone," he added. "Wasn't figuring in the cost of labor. I can do a lot of the repair myself, but she'll be going to the shop for some of it."

Buffy's big eyes filled with tears.

_Fuck. _He really hated seeing a woman cry.

"Tell you what-we can make a deal." Spike smirked when Buffy turned hopeful, watery eyes on him. "When she's all fixed up, you owe me a car wash, and we'll call it even."

Buffy's expression went immediately from verge-of-tears to narrow-eyed suspicion. "A car wash," she repeated.

"Yup, that's right." Spike leaned against the workbench and watched Buffy mull that over.

"Right. And you think I'm going to buy that, why, exactly?"

Spike shrugged. "You don't wanna believe me, that's your prerogative. But I'm dead serious, love. You wash my car in your skimpiest bikini and your highest heels, and I'll wipe the slate clean."

Buffy was about as far from crying now as he'd ever seen her. Much better. It was easier to be brassed off at the chit when she wasn't going all soggy. She stood up in a rush, and fury colored her cheeks. Spike eyed her warily; he didn't miss the way her hands curled into fists as she stepped closer to him. Knowing her, she was one more jibe away from using those fists on him. And he thought _he _had a short fuse? Compared to this girl he was the very picture of reason and restraint.

"Oh, my god, Spike, you are the most vile-" Buffy closed her eyes and muttered something under her breath. After a few moments her hands relaxed at her sides, and she opened her eyes. "I'm going to stick with the payment plan, if you don't mind. How does, um, twenty dollars a week sound?"

Spike did some quick mental arithmetic. "Sounds like you'll be paying this off for the next couple years. You sure you wouldn't rather be shut of it in one afternoon? I'll supply the sponges, even."

Buffy glowered at him. "Yes. I'm sure."

Spike smiled, not at all surprised when her scowl grew more pronounced. "Well, lucky for you, I've got a buddy in the auto-parts business. Not going to cost me near as much as you'd think. 'Sides, I don't want your money."

"You don't-" Buffy took one step closer to him. _If looks could kill_, he thought. "What exactly _do _you want, then?"

Spike succumbed to temptation and reached out to twirl a long lock of hair around one hand. He let her silky-smooth hair slip through his fingers. Christ, but that felt good. He trailed one finger down her cheek before letting his hand drop back to his side. "Run on home, Goldilocks. We'll figure out later how you can make it up to me."

"You ... you are such an ass!" Buffy kicked him in the shin. Well. Hadn't seen that one coming. He'd been too busy watching her hands-and her perky tits, if he was being perfectly honest-to be on guard against an attack from another quarter. "If you think I'm going to ... to ... _sleep _with you, you're-"

"Think an awful lot of yourself, don't you? Trust me, you're not my type. Now get out of here. I've got work to do." Spike turned his back on her. After a second, he heard the clack of her sandals as she stomped out of the garage. He let out a heavy breath, relieved she'd taken off before he'd done something they would both regret. He hadn't been lying: scrawny blondes weren't his type-especially not pushy ones prone to violence-but fuck if there wasn't something alluring about the bint.

_Bollocks._

Spike punched up the Misfits, cranked up the volume on the stereo, and rolled back under the DeSoto.


	9. Chapter 9

_Beta'd by KnifeEdge, Puddinhead, and Ryn_

_Also: hey, it's my birthday! Reviews make lovely gifts. :)_

* * *

><p>"Where do you think you're going, Miss Summers?"<p>

Dawn stopped in her tracks. _Crap_. She turned around slowly. If she had some time to think, she was sure she'd be able to come up with a plausible excuse for being in the shop wing-with one hand on the exit to the teachers' parking lot, no less-instead of in biology class where she belonged. Dawn put on her most innocent expression and prepared to cry if necessary.

Janice grinned at her. "Gotcha."

"Oh, my god, Janice, you suck!" Dawn pushed through the door into the sunshine. The weather had changed in the past week, and the air was brisk. It was refreshing after sitting in overheated classrooms all morning. Dawn felt wide awake for the first time all day.

"Where we going, Summers?" Janice slipped her arm into the crook of Dawn's elbow and pulled her into a skipping run across the parking lot.

"Who said _we're _going anywhere?" Dawn pulled her arm out of Janice's grasp. "That was really mean, just so you know."

"Ah, c'mon, I was just kidding around. You should have seen the look on your face." Janice giggled, and Dawn relented.

"Do you want to go to the mall?"

"Sounds good to me. Anything's better than listening to Mrs. Dvorak. God, English is sooo boring, you know?"

"Yeah," Dawn agreed, though she'd actually been enjoying English class lately. Or she had been when Spike had been helping her with her homework. He made even the really dull stuff, like all that Emily Dickinson's poetry, seem ... almost fun. Then, of course, Buffy had put a stop to that. Dawn knew who she'd be blaming when report cards came out.

The girls strolled down the street, chattering about teachers and music and boys. Janice pulled Dawn into a run when she spotted the number seven bus pulling to a stop half a block ahead of them. Dawn skidded to a halt behind Janice and dug through her book bag for bus fare.

"I got this, Summers," Janice said. She dropped a handful of change in the fare box and headed for the back of the bus. Dawn followed her, and they entertained themselves during the slow trip to the mall by making quiet fun of the other riders on the bus.

* * *

><p>Dawn and Janice perused the lipstick at the Macy's make-up counter. The young woman working the counter-her hair perfectly coiffed and make-up expertly applied-watched them closely as they sampled and commented on the latest colors. Dawn eyed the woman's outfit; the tailored skirt and blouse looked like something Buffy had hiding at the back of her closet. Dawn wondered how much a store like this paid. Probably at least as much as Doublemeat Palace, only without the bonus of smelling like grease at the end of the day.<p>

Janice handed Dawn a bold red shade. "Try this one."

Dawn add the lipstick to the smattering of hues on her hand. "Right. Because Buffy would let me out of the house with that on." She dropped the tube and rummaged through the colors until she spotted a hot pink one she liked.

"Uh, duh? Like I let my mom see what I'm planning to wear at school." Janice held out a deep plum lipstick. Dawn shook her head.

The counter girl moved toward them. The discrete gold name tag pinned to her silk blouse-no neon polyester or cheap plastic here-read 'Denise.' "No school today, ladies?" Denise asked. Her smile was sweet and completely fake.

"We're home schooled," Janice said.

Denise nodded. Her smile got brighter and more insincere. "May I help you find something?"

"I need to find a birthday present for my mom," Janice said. "Can you help me find her perfume? I forgot the name, but I can tell you what the bottle looks like." She gave a vague description that matched roughly half the perfume decanters on display.

Dawn moved slowly around the counter. She rifled through a variety of eye make-up before moving on to the foundation and blush. She looked around the store and sighed. Thanksgiving was still weeks away, and already Christmas decorations were on display. Dawn wasn't looking forward to the holidays for the first time in, well, ever. Without her mom ...

She blinked back tears. "Janice, are you almost done?" she said. "I'm ready to go."

Janice shrugged. "I guess I'll have to look in my mom's room," she told Denise. "I don't want to get the wrong thing. Thanks for your help, though."

Dawn and Janice left Macy's and headed for the restroom. The bathroom was empty except for a young mother changing her baby. Janice and Dawn set their bags on the counter in front of the mirror and busied themselves with fixing their hair until they had the space to themselves. When the woman strapped her baby back into its stroller and left, Janice turned to Dawn. "Let's see what you got."

Dawn grinned and emptied her loot onto the counter-three tubes of lipstick, two cases of eye shadow, a tube of mascara, and an eyeliner. Janice whistled approvingly. "Not bad, Summers," she said, picking up the dark red lipstick. "Do you mind?"

Dawn shook her head. "Nope. I thought you'd like that one." She chose the hot pink shade-Backstage Bambi, according to the label-and carefully applied it. She eyed herself in the mirror, then grabbed a paper towel and scrubbed the lipstick off. She replaced it with the bright red that Janice had selected. Much better. Dawn heavily outlined her eyes in black and stepped back to assess the results. The make-up was fine, she decided. It was the clothes that needed to go. Too bad a new wardrobe wasn't in the budget.

"You ready?" Janice asked.

"Sure." Dawn gathered up her new cosmetics and dropped them into her backpack.

* * *

><p>Buffy struggled to keep the smile on her face as the case worker leafed through the papers Buffy had provided. The woman on the other side of the desk was quite petite-shorter even than Buffy-and seemed to be trying to make up for her lack of height with the size of her hair. Buffy wondered just how much hairspray, mousse, and gel a person could afford on a social worker's salary.<p>

And the woman was saying something. Buffy tore her eyes away from the tower of dark curls and plastered on her widest smile. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

The woman-'Cheryl,' the nameplate on her desk read, though she hadn't bothered to introduce herself-sighed and shuffled through the papers again. "Your employer covers more than eighty percent of your insurance premium, so you won't qualify for the state health care plan. We ask that you contact your employer to get enrolled in the plan they offer."

"Oh," Buffy said flatly. "But …"

Cheryl glanced up. It was the first time she'd actually made eye contact with Buffy since their little meeting had begun. "Yes?"

Buffy swallowed hard. "I can't afford the insurance at work. That's why I'm here."

Cheryl nodded. "I'm sorry to hear that." Somehow, Buffy doubted it. "We will be able to offer insurance for your sister-Dawn, is it? However, you are not currently eligible for coverage."

It took all of Buffy's willpower to concentrate on the rest of what the case worker had to say after that. It was a good thing Dawn, at least, would have insurance-or so she tried to tell herself. She nodded in the right places as Cheryl outlined what benefits they would be receiving and signed her name on all the appropriate lines. Buffy exited the office with a sheaf of papers and a vague sense of shame. She'd been assured her card for the food stamp program would be arriving soon, but she wasn't sure she wanted to use it. Ever.

_You're doing this for Dawn, _Buffy reminded herself as she got into her car. She glared at the Doublemeat Palace hat sitting on her passenger seat. God, she hated her job. If it weren't for Dawn, she'd quit tomorrow. But that wasn't an option, so she put the car in drive and headed off to one more endless day of flipping burgers.

* * *

><p>Dawn rolled her eyes at the fifty-seventh penis-shaped gag gift Janice held up for her entertainment. "Gross," she said, and returned her attention to Hot Topic's body jewelry selection. "How much do you think Buffy would kill me if I pierced my lip?"<p>

"I'm guessing … all the way dead," Janice replied. "Plus, it's really dangerous. My cousin's boyfriend's sister got her lip pierced, and, like, half her face went totally numb." She glanced at the jewelry display that had captivated Dawn's attention for the past five minutes. "But look at that. You could stretch your earlobes. I bet Buffy wouldn't even notice if you start with a little one."

Dawn shrugged. "Maybe." She looked over her shoulder; the store clerk was busy at the check-out. She slipped a package containing a faux lip ring into her pocket before casually sauntering over to the poster display. Janice trailed along and stood silently by as Dawn flipped through the posters. She paused on a grainy, black-and-white image of a scrawny, long-haired man posed in front of a graffitti'd bathroom wall. _Joey Ramone, CBGB, 1992_, read the print along the bottom of the poster.

Janice gave a little snort, and Dawn turned to meet her friend's amused gaze.

"What?"

Janice shrugged. "Nothing. Just … what's up with you?"

Dawn shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Was she being weird? She knew half the school thought she was some sort of weirdo; most of her so-called friends had treated her like a freakazoid since her mother died. Which might have something to do with the complete and total meltdown she'd had in front of her art class when Buffy showed up at school and told her …

She forced that memory away. Janice was the only person who still wanted to hang out with her, and Dawn didn't want to do anything-like turning into a sobbing mess in the middle of the mall-that would make her change her mind.

"What do you mean? Nothing's up with me."

"I don't know, wanting to pierce body parts, ogling heroin addicts." Janice gestured to the poster of Joey Ramone. "And don't think I didn't notice you, like, _stroking _all the black leather at Express. You're not gonna go all Goth on me, are you? Because I'm just not down with the emo crowd."

Dawn giggled. "No, I'm not 'going Goth,' you dork. Just, uh, maybe a little bit punk?"

"Please tell me this isn't because you're trying to impress your neighbor."

"No! God, don't be gross."

"Whatever," Janice said. "I know you're totally hot for him."

"Hope you're talking about me," a familiar voice said from behind Dawn. She turned to see Jason standing there with another boy. In the few seconds it took for her brain to start working, she managed to look Jason up and down, taking in his tall, lean figure. His dark hair was mussed; it made her want to run her fingers through it. Dawn finally met Jason's blue eyes and realized she'd been ogling him. A blush immediately pinked her cheeks.

"Oh, gag me, Jay," Janice laughed. "No, we were talking about Dawn's neighbor she's got a crush on."

Dawn hissed a horrified "shut up!" at her friend, but Janice kept right on talking.

"When am I going to get to meet this uber-hottie, anyway?"

Dawn wished the floor would open up and swallow her. She couldn't believe Janice was doing this to her in front of Jason, of all people. "I'm not allowed to have anyone over when Buffy's not home," she mumbled.

Janice rolled her eyes. "God, you'd think not having parents around would be fun."

Dawn didn't know what to say to that.

Jason filled the awkward silence that fell between the girls. "You are such a moron, Janice." He nudged Dawn gently with his elbow. "Hey, don't listen to her. You know how she is-if her mouth's moving, it means her brain's not on."

Janice gaped at Dawn for a second before reaching out and giving her a quick hug. "I'm so sorry. That was a really stupid thing to say."

Dawn shrugged. "It's okay," she said, even though it really wasn't.

"Uh, hey, I'm starving," Janice said. "Do you want to get something to eat?"

"I … no, I think, I think I have to go," Dawn said. She didn't look at Janice or Jason or Jason's friend whose name she didn't even know and who she really didn't want to cry in front of. And she thought if she didn't get out of there right now, she was going to burst into tears. Janice was supposed to be the one who understood; she was the only one who even seemed to remember that Dawn used to be someone other than that girl whose mom died.

She walked away without saying goodbye and didn't turn around when she heard Janice call her name. When she heard quick footsteps behind her, Dawn sped up her own pace. She was nearly to the exit before a hand closed around her upper arm.

"Dawn." To her surprise, it was Jason's voice that said her name, Jason's warm breath that stirred the hair at the nape of her neck. "Are you okay?"

She nodded without looking at him and tried to pull her arm out of his grasp. He let her go, but then put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him.

"Jan's an idiot," Jason said. His voice was so quiet she had to strain to hear him. "Don't let her get to you."

"I know," Dawn said quietly. "I just … I thought she got it, you know?" She really wished he would go away and stop being so nice, because him being nice just made her want to cry even more. She didn't mean for this to be such a big deal, and maybe it wasn't even Janice's thoughtless remark that was upsetting her. Maybe it was just that Christmas was coming, and her mom was … dead.

Dawn had somehow managed to not ever put that word together with her mom, not once in the past six months. All she wanted was to run home and curl up in her mom's bed, wrap her fuzzy red blanket around her shoulders, and be surrounded by her scent. No, all she wanted was to be wrapped in her mom's arms, but right now her bed and a blanket that still held a hint of her perfume would have to do. Only she couldn't even do that, because someone else was living in their house, and all her mom's furniture and things had been sold or given away except for just a few special items, and …

And she had to stop thinking about this right now, or she really was going to start blubbering like a big, embarrassing baby. Dawn kept her face turned away from Jason. "I want to go home," she said through numb lips.

"Okay," Jason said. "We can do that." He smiled at her just as if she weren't a total freak, that beautiful, dimpled smile that made Dawn feel warm all the way down to her toes. Then he took her hand in his, and they walked out of the mall into the fading afternoon sunlight. The warmth of his hand against hers sent a thrill through Dawn's entire body, and she couldn't bring herself to tell Jason that the home she meant was a place she could never go again. Instead, she let herself enjoy the feel of his fingers curled around hers and the rhythm of his stride slowing to match hers as they walked together across the parking lot. For just that moment, everything else faded to insignificance.

* * *

><p>Spike was contemplating chucking his computer out a window when the doorbell rang. "Brilliant," he said, and cheerfully sprang from his desk to answer the door. He needed any excuse to get away from the tedious task of catching up on his emails and sorting through notes from his editor; at this point, he'd happily welcome a Bible-thumper peddling religion or, hell, even an annoying eight year old in uniform peddling cookies.<p>

Spike had to stifle a sigh when he swung the front door open. "Dawn. What can I do for you?"

Dawn Summers stared up at him, her big blue eyes caked in dark makeup. "Hi, Spike," she said. She chewed on her bottom lip, which was not only painted street-walker red, but also sported a delicate, silver ring.

He leaned against the door frame and regarded Dawn for a moment. She shivered as he watched her, her thin arms bare beneath a two-sizes-too-small t-shirt. At least the girl was coordinating; her ripped jean skirt was at least as too-small as the shirt.

"Your sister see that yet?" he asked, and gave her lip ring a gentle tug. It came off in his hand. He chuckled. "Well, that's lucky for me, innit? No doubt it'd somehow be my fault if you were poking holes in yourself."

"Can I have that back, please?" Dawn held out an imperious hand-he knew where she got _that _move from-and Spike obediently returned her jewelry. He watched her reaffix it with slender, black-polish-tipped fingers. "And, what? How is what I do your fault?"

"Never mind. Let's just say big sis doesn't much like me." He looked at her sternly. Best to get to the point and get her out of here. "What's up, pigeon? You know the rules; not supposed to be hanging around me, remember?"

She shivered again and wrapped her arms around herself. "I'm locked out," she said. "And Buffy's working a double shift today, so she won't be home til, like, really late." Dawn looked at him then with those big eyes that made him think of his sister, and any resistance he might have had went right out of him.

"What're you waiting for?" He stepped back and waved her inside. "Get in here before you turn into one giant goosebump."

She smiled gratefully as she scooted past him into the foyer. "Thanks, Spike," she said through chattering teeth.

Spike closed the door and turned to the hall closet, rummaging inside to find a sweatshirt. "Here," he said, and handed it to her. He dragged a hand through his hair and considered what to do.

"You're not too happy to see me, huh?" Dawn said. She zipped the sweatshirt and pushed the sleeves up to her elbows; they immediately slid back down her arms and covered her hands again, but she at least looked warmer.

Spike shrugged. "It's not you. Just not looking for another chat with your sister. D'you know," he ushered Dawn into the kitchen as he spoke, "every time I talk to her, she hits me. Bloody annoying is what that is."

Dawn giggled and dropped her back pack on the kitchen table. "Really?"

"'Fraid so." He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and handed it to Dawn. "Call her, tell her where you are." He wandered into the other room as she made the call, picking up the empty beer bottles and dishes from the night before and making sure his living room was generally safe for impressionable minors. When he got back to the kitchen, Dawn was just setting the phone down. "Any objections?"

"Uh, no," Dawn said. "But she was busy. I left a message. Uh … I'm going to call our home phone, just in case they forget to tell her I called, okay?"

Spike nodded and sat down across the table from Dawn as she left a rambling message for her sister. She glanced up at him once she'd disconnected the call, and there was a look in her eyes that didn't belong to a child. "You all right?" he asked gently.

Dawn shrugged. "I guess."

"That doesn't sound too convincing."

"I'm fine. Buffy's been pretty nice lately. When I see her. She works a lot."

"Gets a little lonely all by yourself, doesn't it?"

She dropped her eyes, but not before Spike saw the tears welling up in them. "I … I'm not a baby," Dawn said. Her tone was defensive.

"'Course not." He leaned back in his chair and regarded her for a moment, searching his brain for a distraction. "You want a snack or something?"

She shook her head. "Not hungry."

"Do you have homework?" Dawn snapped her head up at that, visibly dismayed. "Hey, I told you," Spike continued, "your sister's got it in for me. I'm not going to give her any more excuses to get peeved about you being here."

"Fine." She pulled her back pack towards her and retrieved two textbooks and a notebook. "I'll do my homework." She opened the history text and flipped through the pages.

"Good girl," Spike said. He grinned when she glanced up at him and stuck out her tongue. "Is that all of it? English and history?"

Dawn sighed, but reached into her bag and came out with a math text. "I have some algebra, too, but that's it."

"You got it under control, or do you need help with anything?"

"I think I'm good. Can I listen to music, though?" She rummaged through her back pack one more time. "I have that disc you made for me. I really like it." Dawn looked up at him with a shy smile. Spike couldn't help but smile back at her.

"'Course you can." He pushed back from the table. "In fact, come with me. The stereo's in the living room; you can listen to whatever you like." He led her down the hall and handed her his iPod. He watched her as she scrolled through his music collection. "What'd you like on that disc?"

Dawn didn't glance away from the device in her hand. "Oh, I think my favorites are 'Sheena is a Punk Rocker' and maybe 'Crummy Stuff.' Or 'What do I Get.' But definitely the Ramones more than the Sex Pistols." She scrunched up her nose. "They're just sort of loud and bad."

"Easy there, pet."

"Sorry." She looked at him then, her blue eyes very earnest. "Thanks, though, for the music. It … I really like it. I thought it would just be good for driving Buffy crazy, 'cause she hates it, but …" Dawn gnawed on her lower lip, then continued. "It's … there's all these songs about how much life sucks, and they're all mad and yell-y about it, and that kinda makes it better, you know? Like, I can turn it up loud and sing and yell along with it, and then I feel a little bit better. So, thanks."

Spike didn't know what to say. Making a kid feel better with punk rock, was that what the doctor ordered? Apparently, because there she was standing in front of him, all teary-eyed and sincere. When was the last time he'd done good by someone? No wonder he was struck dumb at her gratitude. "I- You're welcome, pigeon."

Dawn broke into a thousand-watt smile that dispelled all the sorrow she carried with her, at least for the moment. "Honestly, I've been a little obsessed with punk lately. Janice, that's my best friend, threatened to kick me out of her house if I made her listen to any more Green Day."

Spike snorted. "Sorry, kid, but Green Day is _not _punk."

"Oh, okay, Spike. 'Cause you're all about the attitude with your Johnny Cash." She smirked and turned her attention back to the iPod.

"The Man in Black's got attitude in spades." Spike was warming up to this conversation, now they'd gotten past the mushy stuff. "'I killed a man in Reno just to watch him die'? Doesn't get much darker than that."

Dawn waved a dismissive hand at him. "Whatever. Country music is lame. Oooh, Social Distortion! That one, please."

Spike got the music going, grinning to himself when Dawn whirled around the coffee table in an awkward display of uncoordinated limbs. "You do your homework now, okay? I'll be upstairs finishing up some work I've got left."

After one more spin around the living room, Dawn came to a halt in front of him. "Okay. Can I ask if I need help with my homework?"

"Don't know that I'd be much good with the maths, but anything else, you just holler."

Dawn nodded. "Thanks, Spike."

He patted her on the shoulder as they headed in their separate directions. Spike paused in the hallway to be sure she settled down and got to work. His last sight of her as he walked up the stairs was of her diligently bent over her books. He smiled to himself; he thought he'd handled that pretty well. Hopefully his neighbor would agree.

* * *

><p>Dawn closed her algebra book with a frustrated grunt. She wondered briefly if Jason was good at math and would like to tutor her. Five minutes and one slightly naughty daydream later, she came back to herself and her rumbling tummy. She looked around the kitchen and thought about raiding the cupboards. Then she thought the polite thing to do would probably be to find Spike and ask nicely if she could have something to eat.<p>

She'd never been upstairs in Spike's house before, but Dawn didn't think it would be too difficult to find him. She climbed the stairs and found herself in a hallway full of closed doors. She knocked tentatively on the first door to her left and opened it to reveal a bathroom. The second door led to a bedroom that was minimally furnished with a large bed covered in black sheets and a pair of nightstands. Dawn closed the door and headed across the hall to find another bedroom, this one obviously uninhabited. An unassembled bedframe leaned against one wall. Haphazard stacks of cardboard boxes filled much of the rest of the room.

"Dawn." Spike's voice behind her was sudden, and Dawn squeaked in surprise. She was getting a little sick of people sneaking up on her today.

"Hey, Spike," she said, turning to face him. "I was coming to look for you."

He nodded distractedly, his attention fixed on the room behind her. "How's your homework?"

"All done. But, uh, I was kinda getting hungry and, um, could I make something to eat?"

Spike didn't answer for a long moment. Then he shook himself and reached past her to pull the door closed. "C'mon, let's go make some dinner, yeah?" He put a gentle hand on her shoulder and steered her away from the bedroom. They walked in silence down the stairs. Dawn trailed a hand along the plain white wall as they went. She thought it was kind of sad how Spike didn't have any pictures or anything on his walls. It seemed so lonely.

"How long have you lived here?" she asked, following Spike into the kitchen.

"Couple years," he answered. "It'll be, let me think … three years next month."

"And you still haven't unpacked?" She laughed a little until she noticed the pained expression on his face. "I mean, that's cool."

Spike shrugged. "Been busy," he said, shortly. "Now, what should we have?" He opened the fridge and stared into it for a moment before leaning down to move items around on the shelves.

"I … really, Spike, you don't have to make anything for me. I could make grilled cheese or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Ooh, or a grilled cheese and peanut butter sandwich."

It was Spike's turn to laugh. "So you'd eat pretty much anything, is what you're telling me?"

"Well, no. I mean, grilled cheese and peanut butter would probably be gross. I did this thing with tortillas one time, sort of like quesadillas only less queso and more horseradish and pickles and salsa. I thought it was going to be awesome, and it really, really wasn't."

"That … is disgusting." He paused in his perusal of the refrigerator's contents to look over his shoulder at her. "Didn't anyone ever teach you how to cook?"

Her good mood disappeared in a flash. "I … my mom was starting to, but then she-"

"I'm sorry, pigeon." Spike straightened up and faced her. "Don't always think before I open my mouth."

Dawn busied herself with her texts and notebooks, carefully replacing all of her belongings in her back pack. "Whatever. Mom wasn't … well, she was a good cook, but she didn't really _like _to cook, you know? She'd do it for special occasions, but her idea of teaching me to cook probably would have been where to find the take out coupons in the phone book. I swear, we were the only reason the Indian restaurant stayed in business as long as it did. Mom really loved their curry."

"So let's make curry tonight, what d'you say?" Spike started opening cabinets, pulling spices and pans and utensils out of various cupboards and drawers. "There's a package of shrimp in the freezer. Grab that, and then you can make the rice."

"I … I don't know how to make rice." Dawn moved to the freezer as bidden, even as she stammered out a half-hearted protest. "And you should know, I'm … I'm really not a good cook. Like, at all."

"That's the point," Spike said. "I'm gonna teach you how to make rice, and then you'll know how to do it. Won't that be nice?" He set a small pot, a measuring cup, and a bag of rice on the counter. "You can start by reading the directions. If you can read, you can cook."

Soon there was a pot of jasmine rice simmering away on the stove. Spike gave it one final stir before dropping the lid down, pronounced himself proud of Dawn's achievement, and handed her the biggest knife she'd ever seen. "You get to cut the onion," he instructed.

"Don't you have, like, a food processor or something?" Dawn eyed the gleaming silver blade she held in her fist. Visions of severed fingertips and spurting blood danced through her mind. _Ew._"Or one of those choppy things?"

"Nah, don't need the gadgets." Spike took her hand in his and showed her how to hold the knife. "Simpler's better. Start slow and try not to cut anything off."

"Gee, thanks, Spike," she muttered. He chuckled and placed an onion on the cutting board in front of her. "Where'd you learn to cook, anyway? From reading the directions?"

He shook his head and deftly peeled three cloves of garlic. "No, I had a great teacher named Max."

"Max? Is that your older brother?"

"No, he was, uh, one of our cooks." Spike hitched one shoulder, looking a little red in the face.

Dawn's eyes got very wide as a thought struck her. "Oh, are you, like, a lord or something royal?"

"No!" Spike spoke vehemently, and Dawn grinned at his obvious discomfort. "My father, useless prat that he could be, came from money. He spared no expense for all the trappings he thought we needed-big house, fancy cars, household staff."

"Oh." Dawn nodded thoughtfully. "What's a prat?" she asked. "'Cause I think my dad might be one, too."


	10. Chapter 10

_Beta'd by Puddinhead and Ryn_

* * *

><p>The house stood dark and still when Buffy pulled into the driveway. She remained in the car for a minute, listening to the quiet ticking of the engine. More than anything she wanted this day to be over, and the absence of any sign of her sister at seven o'clock didn't bode well. Buffy grabbed the greasy Doublemeat Palace sack containing her and Dawn's supper from the passenger seat and headed into the house.<p>

"Hello?" A whole lot of silence answered her. Buffy flipped the light switch and turned to hang her keys on the mail rack next to the front door. A key chain decorated with an oversized, glittery 'D' sparkled on one of the hooks.

She told herself not to worry; Dawn was probably at Janice's, taking full advantage of the fact that she couldn't get into the house. She went through to the kitchen, and sure enough, the light on the answering machine was flashing. Buffy pushed play.

"Hey, Buffy, it's me. Dawn. Your sister. Um, I'm locked out of the house, so I went next door to Spike's house to see if he was home, and that's where I am right now. So I guess just come get me when you get home, okay? Okay, see you later."

Great. The one thing that would make her day complete: dealing with Spike. Buffy headed through the back door, not even pausing to drop off her purse or the Doublemeat bag. The quicker she got this over with, the better. Once outside, she could hear the faint sound of music emanating from her neighbor's house. She glared at the square of light spilling across the driveway before making her way to the back door. She looked through the window and paused in the act of hammering one fist on the glass.

Dawn stood at the kitchen counter, wielding an alarmingly large knife over a cutting board full of vegetables. Spike was at the stove, and as Buffy watched, he turned and said something that made Dawn laugh so hard she almost dropped her utensil. Something twisted in Buffy's chest at the smile that lit Dawn's face. For a moment, she thought she was going to burst into tears. How long had it been since Dawn had looked that happy? She couldn't remember, couldn't think of a time in the past year that her little sister hadn't carried a shadow on her face.

She took a deep breath and rapped her knuckles firmly on the patio door. Spike wiped his hands on a towel as he moved toward the door.

"Evening," he said as he opened the door. He motioned for her to enter.

The kitchen smelled completely amazing. Buffy hoped—in vain, judging from the twist of his lips—that Spike hadn't heard her stomach growl as she caught a whiff of whatever was bubbling away on the stove. The aroma was a stark reminder that she'd been living on employee meals from the Doublemeat and her own dubious cooking for too many months.

Buffy ignored the empty feeling in her tummy and turned to Dawn, a question on her lips. Her sister beat her to the punch.

"Hi, did you get my message? I called you at work, but they said you were busy, so I told them to tell you where I was, and I left the number and everything so you could call if it wasn't okay."

Okay, that was a lot of words in one breath, which usually meant Dawn was lying. "There was a message at home. You called me at work?"

"Yeah, because I got locked out, and I thought you'd want to know where I was," Dawn said. "But I did all my homework, and Spike wouldn't even let me watch TV at all. Oh! And Spike's teaching me to make curry, so please, can I stay and have supper, please?" She gave Buffy sad-face, which might have worked if Buffy hadn't been the one to teach Dawn that little trick. While it had worked on their father—until he disappeared for greener pastures and younger women, that is—Buffy was immune to puppy-dog eyes. She shook her head, and Dawn pooched her lower lip out a little bit more.

That was when Buffy noticed the silver gleam that shone on her sister's face. She couldn't believe it wasn't the first thing she'd seen. "Dawn Summers! What is that thing doing in your lip?" Buffy took another closer look at the girl. "And where did you get that lipstick?"

Dawn reached up, a look of mild panic growing on her face, and pulled the jewelry out of her lip. "It's fake, Buffy, see?" She held it out for inspection, and Buffy breathed a sigh of relief. "I got the lipstick from Janice. Is it too red? I was just trying it out."

"Is it too ... yes, Dawn, it's too red."

"Told you, didn't I?" Spike said. Dawn stuck her tongue out at him and reapplied the faux lip ring. Buffy turned just in time to see Spike sticking his tongue out in return. He caught her eye and rolled his tongue ring around in his mouth. He smirked at the blush that stained her cheeks.

Buffy bit back a comment—wouldn't do any good, she reasoned—and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Get your stuff, Dawn. It's time to go home." She ignored Dawn's predictable cry of protest and stepped past Spike to the door.

"Stir that sauce, would you?" Spike said to Dawn. Buffy turned, ready to object to him overriding her command, but he stepped into the doorway before she could speak. He stood so close to her she could practically count each of his thick, dark lashes. His proximity forced her onto the deck. Spike followed her, closed the door behind him, and stood with his back to it.

"Can we talk?" he asked.

"Can we not?" Buffy reached for the doorknob, only to have Spike block her way. "What?" She _so _didn't need this.

"First thing." Spike reached into his back pocket and pulled out a battered black wallet. "Stop with the anonymous envelopes of cash." He selected three bills from the wallet and thrust them at her. He huffed out an impatient sigh when she didn't take the money immediately. "You _are _the one dropping twenties in my mailbox every week, yeah?"

"I … your car …"

"Told you I didn't want your money. Remember that?"

"Well, I didn't like the alternative." Buffy glared at him. "Remember _that_?" She took the sixty dollars, though. If he really didn't want her to pay him back, there was an electric bill with dibs on this cash.

Spike scoffed. "I was winding you up, you silly bint. 'S not my fault your sense of humor is on the fritz." He patted his pockets in a fruitless search for cigarettes, then jammed his hands into the front pockets of his too-tight jeans.

Not that Buffy was checking out how tight his jeans were.

"There's nothing wrong with my sense of humor," she said. "I don't find being ogled and propositioned entertaining, is all."

"Okay, look, I'm sorry about that. We got off on the wrong foot. Doesn't mean we have to keep it up, does it?"

Buffy shrugged. "Not making with the friendlies is working out just fine for me."

Spike glanced over his shoulder into the kitchen, and Buffy followed his gaze. Dawn had stationed herself at the stove and was diligently tending the food simmering on the cooktop. "Won't kill you to stay for supper, you know," he said.

"Do you not get that I don't want to spend time with you?"

"Yeah, well, you're not exactly on my list of favorite people, either, sweetheart. But it'd make _her _happy." Spike hitched a thumb in Dawn's direction.

Buffy stared at her sister for a long moment before turning back to Spike. "Why do you care?" she asked.

"Because I'm not a heartless bitch, maybe?" Spike held his hands up in a pacifying gesture when Buffy scowled at him. "Sorry. Shouldn't have said that. I just mean … Well, told you before, Dawn's a good kid. And can you seriously tell me you'd rather have whatever's giving off that awful smell?"

She looked down at the bag hanging in her grip. He had a point. Lukewarm Doublemeat Medleys couldn't hold a candle to the fragrance that had permeated his kitchen. "Really kinda sick of fast food," she admitted, surprising herself with her spontaneous honesty.

Spike looked surprised, too. After a beat, he smiled tentatively. "So you'll stay," he said, as if it were settled. He opened the door to the kitchen. "Hey, Dawn, make a salad for big sis, yeah?"

Dawn grinned widely and nodded her assent. Spike pulled the door shut and met Buffy's gaze. "She's pretty proud of herself. She really did most of the work. I just told her what to do."

"And here I thought you said supper wouldn't be deadly," she said dryly. There was a brief moment of silence between them, then her lips twitched slightly, and Spike laughed.

"Summers, was that a real, live joke?"

"Told you there's nothing wrong with my sense of humor," Buffy muttered. "And I didn't agree to—"

Spike sliced his hand through the air, cutting off her objections. "Stop it. Just ... relax for five minutes. Look," he urged with a nod toward Dawn. "Look at her. You wanna wipe that smile off her face? 'Cause I don't."

The near echo of her earlier thoughts jarred Buffy's senses.

"I don't get you."

Spike turned to meet her gaze with a startled look. "What's to get?"

"What are you getting out of this? I mean, I _know _you can't stand me—"

"Maybe not everything's about you, princess," Spike interrupted. "You ever think of that?" He strode across the deck and took a seat on the top stair, his back to her.

"That's what ..." Buffy felt ridiculous talking to his back. She crossed the distance between them and, after a bare second of hesitation, took a seat next to him. "That's what I was trying to say. I mean, I'm not Miss Popularity or anything, but I've seen my fair share of guys sucking up to Dawn because they thought they could score points with me." She felt more than saw Spike jerk next to her, and hurried to add, "Trust me when I say I'm totally convinced that's not what's going on here."

"What's the problem, then?" Spike asked. "The kid was locked out. What should I have done? Let her sit outside in the dark til you got home?"

Buffy shifted. He was right; he was better than the alternative. Not that she was going to tell _him_that. "No, I guess … I mean, thanks for helping out." Her voice wavered, and she wished she had made those words sound even the least bit sincere.

Spike shook his head. "You know, if you gave me half a chance, you might find out I'm not such a bad bloke." He regarded her steadily for a moment. Buffy squirmed a little under his scrutiny. "Food'll be on the table in half an hour. Time enough for you to go change before you join us." He grinned suddenly, and Buffy braced herself for a smart-ass remark. "Plenty of time to wash off the eau de grease factory. Not that I don't love the smell, but …"

She stood up quickly. "If you're trying to prove you're a decent guy, you're not off to a great start."

Spike laughed. "Right, forgot about your broken funny bone. Run on, then. And I promise to be on my best behavior when you get back."

"Huh. I'll believe it when I see it," Buffy muttered. She stepped off the deck, though, rather than argue with him any longer.

* * *

><p>Spike was beginning to wonder if Buffy actually intended to join them for supper when a tentative knock sounded on the door. Dawn scurried across the kitchen, abandoning her spot at the stove for nearly the first time since they'd started cooking, and opened the door with a grin.<p>

"Hi, Buffy!" She practically bounced as she stepped aside to let her sister into the house. "Thanks for letting us stay for supper. Doesn't it smell yummy? Oh, did you know Spike had a cook when he was growing up?" Dawn smirked at him as she shared that tidbit of information. Not for the first time, he regretted letting that slip.

"No, I didn't." Buffy arched an eyebrow in his direction. "Sounds … fancy." She held up a bottle of wine. "Here, I brought you this."

Spike took the offered bottle. "You didn't need to do that, pet," he said.

She shrugged. "It was, uh, well, my mom liked wine a lot, and we have a bunch of bottles left. I don't really drink much, but I thought you might like it. As a thank you for looking after Dawn."

He met Buffy's eyes and was struck again by how lovely she was. Her golden hair hung in waves around her shoulders, and her small frame was accentuated by the heavy cream-colored sweater she wore. "Thanks. But really, it was no problem. She's a pleasure to have around."

Dawn beamed at his words, then tugged on Buffy's arm. "Come sit down. Wait til you try this curry, it's just as good as anything we got from India House."

Buffy looked skeptical at Dawn's claim, but took a seat at the table. Spike let Dawn have the honors of putting the food on the table as he opened the wine. "This is quite nice," he said. "Your mum had good taste. Would you like a glass?"

"Can I have one?" Dawn spoke with a hopeful grin. She held her thumb and forefinger an inch apart. "A little one."

"Not a chance!" "Are you daft?"

The smile left her face in a hurry as Buffy and Spike answered in unison. Their words blurred together, but the message was clear. "Mom would let me have one."

"Well, I'm not Mom."

Dawn sank into her chair and folded her arms. The glower on her face said it all, but in case there was any doubt of her mood, she mumbled, "Yeah, no kidding."

A quiet sigh escaped Buffy, but she didn't respond to Dawn's comment. "Yes, I'd love some wine."

Spike poured a glass and moved to hand it to Buffy. As she reached for it, he pulled his hand back and fixed her with a piercing gaze. "You _are _old enough to drink, right, kitten? I'd hate to be a bad influence."

She rolled her eyes and snatched the wine glass from his hand. The red liquid splashed against the sides of the glass. "Is there any chance we can just pretend that whole night didn't happen?" she asked.

"Now why would I want to do that?" Spike said with a grin. He poured some wine for himself before joining Buffy and Dawn at the table. He filled his plate with salad and rice and curry and was happy to see his guests doing the same. They were both too skinny. No wonder, if they were both as clueless in the kitchen as Dawn had been at the start of the night.

"Oh, my gosh," Buffy moaned around a forkful of curry and rice. "This is the best thing I've had in my mouth in ages."

Spike nearly choked on the drink of wine he'd just taken. He met Buffy's eyes, and let out a chortle of laughter as her cheeks flamed red.

Dawn remained oblivious to the interplay between the adults. "Isn't it yummy?" she gushed. "I bet I could make it at home sometime, too. Oh, and Spike said he'd teach me how to make flat bread to go with it next time."

"Next time you lock yourself out?" Buffy's voice was cool. "Because I don't want you doing that on purpose just so you can get your way."

"God, Buffy," Dawn whined. "I didn't do it on purpose!"

"I didn't say you did, I'm just warning you not to in the future. So we don't have to have this conversation again."

"But isn't this nice? A home-cooked meal, real food, _vegetables_." Dawn speared a piece of lettuce and a tomato from her salad and bit into them with a self-satisfied crunch.

"Please don't act like I never give you vegetables."

"Newsflash, Buffy: rehydrated pickles may be green, but they do not actually have any nutritional value."

Spike snorted into his wine. Two sets of eyes turned to him; they both looked slightly abashed. "No, no, carry on," he said with a wave of his hand. "This is better than the soaps any day."

"You watch soaps?" The question came in surround-sound stereo. Just like that, Buffy and Dawn forgot their little spat in favor of quizzing Spike about his television-watching habits. He got caught up in a heated defense of the art of soap operas, particularly "Passions," which he owned on bootleg DVD.

"It's bloody genius," he concluded. "Midgets, witches, magic, talking dolls. What's not to love?"

"You are such a girl," Buffy teased.

Spike had to tamp down the urge to pull her hair. He settled for making a face at her and changing the subject. Dawn quickly dominated the conversation with her chatter about her friends and classes, items she was adding to her Christmas wish list, and her opinions about music.

Spike was happy to let her ramble on. Until this moment he hadn't realized just how much he missed having people around him. It had been, what, nearly three years now, and when had he ever had guests at his table?

He glanced at Buffy and caught the way she rolled her eyes when Dawn launched into an ode to the wonder that was punk rock.

"So giving her that cd was not a good idea?" Spike stretched back in his chair and retrieved the wine from the counter. He tilted the bottle in Buffy's direction; she pushed her glass toward him for a refill.

"Hmm, obnoxiously loud music made by people who can't sing or play their instruments? That's fine, until I have to listen to the same ninety minutes of music ten times a day."

Spike winced. "Sorry, pet."

Buffy shrugged and took a sip of wine. "I'm getting used to it. On the bright side, it's better than her 'I want to be Hannah Montana and marry Justin Bieber' stage."

"Hey!" Dawn folded her arms across her chest and glared at her sister.

"Payback, pigeon," Spike said with a grin. "Shouldn't have spilled the beans about the cook."

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry about that." She twisted her lips into a frighteningly accurate imitation of his smirk. "Little Lord Fauntelroy."

"Oi!"

Buffy let out a snort of laughter, and this time Spike couldn't resist the urge to reach across the table and tug on a golden lock of hair. When she did nothing more than grin back at him, he had a sudden vision of amicable dinners and laughter and feminine voices in his house. His insides warmed at the thought.

"This is really nice," Dawn said suddenly. "I miss having family dinners."

The smile dropped from Buffy's face, and a chill swept through the room. Spike looked from one girl to the other. Dawn stared down at her plate, dragging the tines of her fork idly through the remains of her meal. Buffy took Dawn's free hand in hers and squeezed gently.

"Right. Let me clear this stuff up." Spike stood up and reached for the empty plates on the table. He started running water in the sink as Buffy spoke quietly to Dawn. He tried not to listen to their hushed conversation; it was strange to feel like an intruder in his own home. He kept his back to the girls until he heard a chair scrape across the floor.

"Thanks for everything today." Dawn spoke quietly from beside him.

Spike dried his hands and turned to look at her. He could see she'd been crying. A quick glance at Buffy showed her drying her eyes as well. "Anytime," he said. Dawn launched herself at him and wrapped her arms around him in an unexpected hug. He patted her shoulder with one hand, the other still holding on to the towel he'd just used. He looked over her head at Buffy. She looked bemused as she watched Dawn give him one more squeeze before releasing him.

"I'll help you clean up," Dawn offered.

"You don't have to—" Spike started to decline

"Dawn," Buffy interrupted. "I'll help with the dishes. You head home and start getting ready for bed. Pack your lunch for tomorrow, too, all right?"

Dawn sighed, but moved to collect her back pack without argument. "Bye, Spike," she said. "Thanks again."

Buffy and Spike regarded each other following Dawn's departure. "You really don't need to help," he said, finally.

She shrugged as she stood up. "I … we need to talk." She picked up the curry pan and carried it to the counter. "Do you have something to put this in?"

Spike nodded and retrieved several containers for the leftovers. They worked in silence for a few minutes, and soon had all the dishes cleared and ready to be washed.

"You wash, I'll dry?" Buffy suggested.

"Don't worry about it," he said. "You wanted to talk, let's talk." He leaned against the counter and watched as she fidgeted with the hem of her sweater.

"You're really good with her." Buffy spoke quietly, her eyes fixed on the ground between their feet. "I haven't seen her so happy in … I don't even know how long."

The look on her face, the vulnerable set of her shoulders, the sorrow in her voice—it all made him want to pull her into his arms and tell her everything would be all right. Spike ruthlessly squelched that desire. This was the girl who liked to hit him when things didn't go her way, he reminded himself. She certainly wouldn't take to him having soft, squishy feelings for her. Which wasn't an issue, anyway, because he didn't have any feelings for her, squishy or otherwise. "Sometimes it's easier with someone you don't know so well. To put on a happy face, you know?"

"I guess, but … that didn't look like just putting it on to me." Buffy looked up at him, and Spike was lost in the depths of her eyes. "She really likes you. I mean, a lot. She hasn't talked to me like that since … It's been a long time. Since before Mom got sick." She laughed. "You're eerily in tune with a fourteen year old girl. Why is that?"

Her tone was light, but Spike knew there was a serious question behind her humor. "I have a little sister. Had, I should say. Ellie was just a little older than Dawn when she died."

Buffy clapped a hand over her mouth, and her eyes grew very large. "I'm so sorry, I didn't—"

Spike waved her sympathy away. "It's okay. I mean, it's … it's not _okay_; I miss her every day. Like you do your mum, I expect. But it's been a few years. And having Dawn around—it's nice. She reminds me of Ellie. Even looks like her a bit." He reached for his wallet and removed a well-worn picture. He ran a thumb over the photo before handing it to Buffy.

She took it, her eyes flickering between the image and his face. "She … she does look like Dawnie," she said. "Her hair and her eyes. She's very pretty." Buffy passed the photo back to him, and her fingers brushed against his. "How … what—"

He spoke before she could voice her hesitant question. He might be in a sharing mood tonight, but there were some things he didn't want to talk about. "So, yeah. Probably should have told you before, set your mind at ease. But that's a big part of why I don't mind Dawn hanging about."

Buffy nodded. "Okay. That ... I get that. And I do appreciate your help today. Just—did she really call me at work?"

"I don't know, honestly," Spike said. "She made a couple calls." He moved across the kitchen to retrieve his cell phone from the counter and pulled up the call history before giving Buffy the phone.

"This is our number, but this other one isn't my work." Buffy sighed and glanced up at him. "Do you mind if I call it?"

He nodded his assent. He watched her with interest; she was so animated, every emotion showing on her face. Taking in the gleam in her eye and the set of her jaw, he was grateful not to be on the other end of the line.

"Hi, this is Buffy Summers." She spoke with deceptive cheer. "I think you have a message for me?" Her eyes narrowed as she listened to the response. "Janice? Uh-huh, thanks, bye." She snapped the phone shut and handed it back to Spike.

"I can't do this."

He had to strain to hear her, but the slump of her shoulders and the weary look in her eyes spoke loud and clear. She leaned against the counter next to him, her shoulder so close to his he could feel her warmth. "Can't do what, pet?" he asked. His voice was unintentionally gentle

"Any of this. I can't be a mom to Dawn, I can't even cook dinner! And every day I have to get up and go to work and come home to a teenager who won't talk to me unless it's to tell me a lie." Buffy glanced up at Spike. "Okay, she's not that bad, but this," she pointed at the phone, "is a perfect example. What did she think I would have done if she'd called? I'm not completely unreasonable, am I?"

Spike opened his mouth but paused, unsure how to answer her or if she even required an answer. Luckily, the latter seemed to be the case, as she spoke again before he could formulate a response.

"I'm screwing this up. I'm screwing _Dawn_up. How am I supposed to make sure she goes to college when half the time I don't know how I'm going to put food on the table?"

"Where's this coming from?" A worry struck him, and he felt a surge of guilt for tweaking her about paying for his car. "Are you hurting for money?"

She shook her head. "No! I mean, maybe a little. It's just … I don't know how to do all the things that need to be done. Grocery shopping, laundry, paying bills … It's too much, and that's not even the big stuff, like the fact that she hasn't had any insurance for the past three months. I'm supposed to be taking care of her, and it's every day, and it doesn't stop, and I … I want to be done with it. I just want one day where I don't have to get up and play house and go to a job I hate for not nearly enough money. I'm so, so tired." Buffy's head drooped forward, and she rubbed at her eyes.

"You don't have to do it all alone." Spike spoke slowly. "Your friends—"

She gave him a sideways glance, barely peeking at him from behind the curtain of her hair. "I can't tell them—" She let out a sigh that ended in a bitter laugh. "I can't talk to them about this, so why am I unloading on _you_?"

Her words stung. The reason for that was something he would have to examine later. He nearly snapped back a sharp answer to her, until he took in Buffy's miserable appearance. Her cheeks were blotchy with color, her eyes full of unshed tears. She'd folded her arms around herself and seemed to be trying to take up the smallest amount of space as possible.

"You're hurting," he said. She looked up at him in surprise at his soft words, and he realized how close they were to each other. "And you don't really care what I think of you, do you? Maybe that makes it easier to let it out."

Spike stared down at her, and his focus narrowed to just Buffy. When she'd told him they had to talk, he hadn't expected this. More like a biting lecture and possibly, if he was very lucky, another slap. This glimpse of her allowed him to see the cracks in the facade of the fierce attitude she presented to the world. She was so strong, but she needed a chance to stop being strong. Spike almost ached with wanting to be a haven for her, a soft place for her to rest. He wanted to put a smile on her face and see the weight of her burdens lifted from her shoulders.

Spike pivoted so that he was facing her. Their hips bumped together, and the contact sent a shock through his body. His skin fairly tingled at the heat coming off her as she stared up at him with wide eyes. He reached out and let one hand slip through the golden silk of her hair. He was probably crossing a serious line here, and he wouldn't surprised by a punch to the gut any second.

He spoke while he still had her attention. "It's okay to ask for help, Buffy. You don't have to do this alone." His voice rasped over the words.

Buffy nodded slowly, silently. His hand remained in her hair, combed through the curls at the nape of her neck. The skin beneath his hand was warm and so soft. Spike's senses were bombarded by her—the floral scent wafting from her freshly-washed hair, the color of her eyes, the texture of her hair against his fingers.

She shifted slightly, bringing their bodies closer together. Her eyes were locked on his, and Spike watched as the green of her irises was swallowed up by the black wells of her pupils.

"I could help, if you let me." His nerves jangled as he braced himself for Buffy's inevitable rejection of his offer.

"You … you want to help." Buffy licked her lips and fastened her gaze on Spike's mouth. Then she took a deep breath, and her eyes flicked back to his. "For Dawn, no … no other reason?"

Spike inclined his head; their mouths were a hairsbreadth apart. "Can't think of one, love," he lied. He brushed his lips against hers, just the barest of touches. He was still half-convinced he'd be sporting a black eye if he pushed too hard. She offered no immediate objections, so he leaned in again, intent on kissing her properly.

Then Buffy jerked back slightly and stared down at the floor. Her eyes, wide with panic, flew back up to meet his. "Spike," she said in a strangled whisper, "is that a _snake_?"

He looked down as well to see a slim, black and brown patterned shadow slither across her left foot. He leaned down and scooped it up before it could escape. He straightened to see that Buffy had gone pale. "Oh, she's harmless," he hastened to reassure her. "This is Drusssilla—" Her glossy-eyed stare dissolved into a confused blink when he said the snake's name. "Or, uh, Dru. Just Dru is fine. Ellie named her." Okay, Buffy was looking less like she was going to pass out on him. He smiled, hoping to set her at ease. "She's a ball python, perfectly docile, but altogether too clever at getting free from her cage."

Buffy nodded, her eyes transfixed on the snake that curled around Spike's forearm before making her way to his shoulders. "I really, really don't like snakes," she said. "There was this snake that got loose in high school that—" She shuddered. "Ew. I can't even talk about it."

"Right. I'll just go and put her away." He hurried out of the kitchen and up the stairs to his office, where the snake's cage resided. "Good thing I like you," he muttered as he deposited Dru in her cage and secured the top. He dropped a dictionary on the screen cover for good measure before heading back downstairs.

Buffy was nowhere to be seen.


	11. Chapter 11

_Beta'd by Puddinhead, Ryn, and Tennyoelf_

* * *

><p>Buffy let herself in to the house through the back door, trying to be as quiet as possible. She wasn't quite ready to face Dawn, not with her heart thundering away in her chest-not to mention the sweaty palms and wibbly stomach. Because of the snake, of course. Her reaction had nothing at all to do with Spike, or his blue eyes, or the way he had looked at her as he leaned in for a kiss, or the way his lips felt against hers ...<p>

_Mmm. Lips of Spike._

Oh, no. Lusty thoughts about the bleached menace next door were wrong and bad. She was _not _going to have them anymore.

Except just then another wrong, lusty thought reared its ugly head. His blue, blue eyes … the way he'd stroked the nape of her neck ... Buffy couldn't deny a certain desire to rip his clothes off and DO things to him. Dirty things that shouldn't be done anywhere near a kitchen.

Buffy strove valiantly to turn off the instant replay of the last few minutes at Spike's house. Her brain, however, didn't want to cooperate. She needed a distraction.

As if on cue, Dawn walked into the kitchen. Buffy nearly sighed in relief.

"Are you okay?" Dawn asked. She wore her blue fluffy sheep pajamas, and her face had been scrubbed clean of make-up. "You look a little …" She looked down and fiddled with the hem of her pajama top. "You're mad, aren't you?"

Buffy shook her head. "No, I'm fine. Spike's snake just crawled across my foot." _And that's the only reason I'm freaking out right now. Yeah._

"Oh, Drusssilla!" Dawn completely missed the glare Buffy sent her way when she _hissed_out that ridiculous name. "Isn't she cool? I think she really likes me. Spike let me feed her today, and then she totally curled up around my neck, just like she does with Spike."

Buffy sensed a world-class ramble coming on, and she interrupted her sister before she could really get going. "Sit down, please."

The happy grin faded from Dawn's face, and she slid into the chair across from Buffy. "You _are _mad," she said.

"Well, what did you expect?" Buffy snapped. "You lied to me, Dawn."

"What? I did _not_!"

"Really? So when you said you called me at work, you meant that side job I have babysitting Janice, I guess."

Dawn dropped her gaze to the table top. "Oh. That."

"Yeah, that. How am I supposed to trust you, Dawn?" Buffy leaned forward to catch Dawn's eyes; her sister slumped down in her chair, her chin resting on her chest. "I don't want to have to worry about where you are or what you're doing."

"Maybe if you were home once in a while, you wouldn't have to worry about me."

Buffy sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Dawn, do you not get that I have to go to work? How long do you think we'd have a house or food if I didn't have a job?"

Dawn scowled. "Whatever. You don't _have _to work at the Doublemeat. I bet there's lots of places you could work that would have better hours and-"

Buffy held up a hand to stop the tirade she sensed was coming. "This isn't about me. We're talking about _you _and how I'm supposed to trust you when I catch you lying to me."

A moment passed while Dawn fidgeted in her seat. She peeked at Buffy, then dropped her eyes to her lap. "I'm sorry," she mumbled.

"Half-hearted apology almost accepted." Buffy drummed her fingers on the table. "You need to apologize to Spike. You lied to him after he did something nice for you."

Dawn straightened in her chair, and her eyes lit up. "You think he's nice?"

Buffy bit her tongue before she said anything incriminating. "I … maybe I misjudged him. And he really seems to care about you."

"Can I hang out with him sometimes?" Dawn perked up, all trace of the sullen teenager she'd been for the past ten minutes gone.

It struck Buffy that she really should have talked to Spike about Dawn, as she'd intended. Instead, she'd dumped all her problems on him. How exactly had that happened? It had to be Spike's fault; she could act like a rational adult when he wasn't around. "I don't … I mean, I guess, as long as Spike doesn't mind. We can talk to him in the morning, okay?"

"What? I thought that's what the whole 'go home, Dawn' thing was about-so you could talk about me behind my back." She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. "What were you doing over there?"

Buffy shrugged uncomfortably. "We _were_ talking, but then there was that snake on my foot incident. I … I sorta ran out before we could finish our discussion." _Or make-out session. Stupid snake._

Buffy hoped her cheeks weren't flaming. Her whole body felt hot and her skin too tight as she recalled again the tantalizing brush of Spike's lips against hers. She sort of hated that snake. Spike had been just about to kiss her-and more to the point, she'd been about to let him.

Maybe she should be thanking stupid _Drusssilla _instead; the last thing Buffy needed right now was to do anything stupid. Especially with a bleached, pierced punk whose body was way too tempting for her own good.

"Uh, hello?" Dawn snapped her fingers, and Buffy snapped back to the conversation she'd just zoned out on.

"Oh, um, yeah, I … it's fine with me if it's okay with Spike," she stammered. "But you have to be respectful. And no more lying!"

"Ugh, whatever." Dawn stood up in a flurry of teenage indignation. "I didn't hurt anyone, and you know what? I could have done anything I wanted today, and you never would have known. But instead I went to Spike's, and I did my homework, and I learned how to cook something. So … so there!" She swirled out of the room and stomped upstairs with more force than one would expect from a ninety-pound scrap of humanity.

Oh, goody. Sullen Teenager was back in full force. Had she been so moody at that age? Buffy seriously doubted it. Maybe being allowed to spend time at Spike's would improve her attitude; Dawn had been cheerful enough during dinner to make that a distinct possibility.

That meant Buffy would have to actually talk to Spike again, and _that_meant their almost-kiss was going to be firmly placed in the 'things of which we shall never speak' category. Buffy rose and made her way upstairs, even though she had the feeling that sleep would be a long time coming tonight.

An hour and forty seven minutes later, as she was still waiting to fall asleep, Buffy decided: she _hated _that snake.

* * *

><p>Buffy woke in a foul mood that wasn't helped by the realization she'd either forgotten to set her alarm or slept through it. She rolled out of bed and glanced at the clock as she quickly gathered up the nearest clothes she could find. If they left in the next ten minutes, Dawn would make it to school on time. Buffy had a feeling that wasn't going to happen.<p>

"Dawn, are you awake?" She called on her way past her sister's room to the bathroom. "We're running late!"

There was no sign of life from behind Dawn's door. Buffy rapped sharply on the door and waited a moment. When she still got no response, she pushed the door open. "Dawn, come on, you need to-"

The room was empty. Buffy raised her voice. "Dawn! I'll be ready in five minutes. Don't forget your lunch!" She waited a moment. Still quiet. She listened and couldn't hear any movement from downstairs. "Dawn, did you hear me?"

Buffy shrugged when she didn't get an answer. There would be plenty of time to deal with a moody teenager _after _she got ready. She headed into the bathroom and rushed through her routine. She was done in four minutes flat. Her hair was inexcusable, really, but there was no time for anything else, not if she wanted to get Dawn to school on time.

"Let's get going," she called as she headed downstairs. She grabbed her key chain from its spot by the door, then froze as she noticed that Dawn's keys were gone.

"Dawn?" Buffy walked into the kitchen-no Dawn, but she wasn't expecting anything else. The bowl of cereal, ready and waiting for milk, was a surprise. An apple sat next to the bowl, anchoring a piece of paper. Buffy picked it up and read the note scrawled on it in Dawn's looping cursive.

_B-I got a ride to school this morning. Hope you don't mind. Have a good day off!_

A flower was doodled at the bottom of the page in lieu of a signature. She set the note down with a sigh. Three guesses who Dawn had conned into taking her to school, and the first two didn't count. Buffy thought back to the night before and Spike's offer of help. Maybe she should take him up on that. Something had to give, especially where Dawn was concerned. The fact she had done her homework last night spoke volumes about Spike's influence on her.

Buffy nodded to herself. She'd talk to Spike, she decided. If he really wanted to help with Dawn-keeping an eye on her after school, making sure she did her homework and stuff like that-she'd be happy to pass off some of the responsibility. As long as it was very, very clear that they were nothing more than neighbors, because any more moments like last night were a complication she didn't need. She ignored the flip her stomach gave at the reminder of their near kiss and sat down to eat her breakfast.

* * *

><p>Spike stepped back from the punching bag he'd been pummeling for the past half-hour and drew in a deep breath. His muscles twanged as he stretched his arms out behind his back. It was past time for him to shake off his distraction and get home; the morning contingent of aerobics enthusiasts were making their way into the gym. He usually made it a point to be long gone before the class instructor started blaring unbearable pop music and shouting incomprehensible commands at the spandex and lycra-clad attendees. Spike unwrapped the bindings around his hands as he made his way to the locker room. After towelling the sweat from his face and chest, he slipped his t-shirt and sweatshirt on and headed out.<p>

He had just parked in front of his house when he heard a rapping on the passenger-side window. Spike turned to see Dawn smiling at him. She opened the door and slid into the car.

"Morning, pigeon," he said. "What's going on?"

The smile dropped off Dawn's face, and she twisted her hands in her lap. "Um, I just wanted to say, uh … I'm sorry I lied about calling Buffy last night." The words came out in a rush.

He chuckled. "That's okay, Dawn." Then, thinking better of giving her a free pass, he added, "But don't do it again."

Dawn nodded earnestly. "Promise!" She reached for the door handle, then glanced back at him. "You … would you mind a lot giving me a ride to school? It's Buffy's day off, and I thought it would be nice if she could sleep in."

Spike immediately squelched the thought of Buffy in bed, warm and sleepy, blond hair tousled and messy. "Sure. What time do you need to leave?"

She glanced at her watch. "Now-ish. Is that okay? I just have to leave a note for Buffy and grab my backpack."

He nodded his assent, and Dawn flashed him a brilliant smile. She scooted out of the car and ran towards her house. She was back quickly. "Thanks again, Spike. I bet Buffy will appreciate this, too." She reached for the radio and started scanning through the stations as Spike pulled away from the curb.

After only a few blocks, Spike couldn't help but notice that she kept shooting him sidelong glances. She opened her mouth, then closed it without saying anything. "Something on your mind?" he asked.

Dawn jumped a little. "Uh … well. I just … I had a question, and I thought I'd ask you because … I mean, you're a guy, right?"

"Last I checked, yeah."

"Okay, so … there's this boy, right? And he's really sweet, and I think he likes me, but I don't know. He kissed me once, like, forever ago, and then I got grounded so we couldn't hang out, but then I saw him again yesterday, and he was so nice to me, but how do I know if he likes me or if it's just that he feels sorry for me or something?"

Spike groaned. He was not equipped to deal with the romantic entanglements of a teenager. "Wouldn't you rather talk to your sister about this?"

Dawn scoffed at his suggestion. "Oh, please. Buffy is, like, the queen of terrible relationships."

He probably shouldn't give in to his curiosity, he knew that. Still, he found himself asking, "How so?"

"Well, her first boyfriend-Angel-was all lovey-dovey and super-sweet attentive guy until he got her to sleep with him, and then-"

Spike's conscience got the better of him. "Hold up there, pidge," he interrupted. "You sure this is a story Big Sis would want you telling me?"

"Oh!" Dawn looked abashed. "I guess … probably not. Anyway, yeah, she's had some really lousy boyfriends."

"I'm not exactly a poster child for great relationships myself," he warned. "But if this boy of yours has got a lick of sense, he'll treat you like a princess. If he doesn't, you drop him. Got me?"

She nodded. "Do you think it would be too weird if I maybe called and asked him out? I mean, do boys like that?"

"I can't speak for the entire male population, but personally?" Spike glanced over at Dawn; she was staring at him raptly, just waiting for any pearls of wisdom he cared to impart. "I think a girl who knows what she wants and goes after it is pretty damn sexy. Near impossible to resist, too."

"Thanks, Spike." Dawn nodded sagely. She seemed satisfied with his answer, and Spike hoped that meant she'd leave the topic alone.

He had a sudden attack of doubts-she'd mentioned kissing. Should he grill her about that? He tried to guess at how Buffy would handle the situation, then snickered to himself as the phrase _what would Buffy do? _ran through his head.

"Oh, Spike, can you pull over?" Dawn's voice cut through his thoughts. "That's my friend, Janice." She pointed out a tall, thin girl standing at the next corner. As Spike slowed the car, Dawn turned to him. "That boy I was talking about? He's Janice's brother. So don't say anything about it, all right?"

"All evidence to the contrary, pet, I'm not really in the habit of gossiping about boys with teenagers."

Dawn grinned at his dry tone and shrugged her narrow shoulders. She rolled down her window as Spike rolled the car to a halt. "Hey, Janice!" she called to her friend.

The girl's red curls shone in the sun as she glanced up and around, then her gaze settled on Dawn. Her eyes grew wide as she took in the sight of Dawn in the big, black car. "Wow," she said, approaching the vehicle. "That's a really cool car!"

"I know, right?" Dawn answered.

Janice leaned into the car, her brown eyes fixed on the driver. "You must be Spike," she said. "I've heard so much about you." She turned to Dawn and, in a loud whisper, added, "You're right. He's totally hot!"

"Oh, my god," Dawn muttered. Her cheeks flushed brick red, and she squirmed in her seat. She shoved Janice, and the other girl backed her head and shoulders out of the car. "Could you be any more obvious?"

Janice simply shrugged and continued to stare at Spike. He was tempted to tell her to take a picture, but he had the feeling she'd be only too happy to take him up on the offer. If there was one thing he didn't need, it was a hormone-bomb of a teeny-bopper running around with his picture on her cell phone.

"Does your friend need a ride to school?" he asked Dawn, making sure to pitch his voice too low for Janice to hear. He was mightily relieved when Dawn shook her head.

"I'll get out here. We can walk the rest of the way; it's only a few blocks." She slid her arms into the straps of her backpack and opened the door. "Thanks for the ride."

"You're welcome, sunshine." He watched Dawn and Janice saunter down the sidewalk, where they met up with a small group of girls who were heading in the same direction. The lot of them put their heads together, all talking at once. Then every single girl turned rapt eyes toward him. Janice waggled her fingers at him.

Spike gave the girls a curt wave, which set a fit of giggles tearing through the group, and peeled away from the curb.

* * *

><p>"Oh, my gosh, Dawn, who was that?" Bethany gushed.<p>

"Is he your brother?" Lisa asked.

Dawn grinned as she glanced around at the bevy of intrigued faces surrounding her. "Oh, Spike? No, he's just a friend," she said, cool as a cucumber.

There was a collective sigh and coo from the girls. "Wow, that's so cool." Nevaeh, who hadn't spoken to Dawn since the day she'd had her meltdown at school, sounded impressed. "He's got a really awesome car, too."

"I know," Dawn said. "He's teaching me how to drive." Okay, so that was a lie. But she bet if she asked really nicely, he'd be willing to teach her, so it wasn't that much of a stretch.

"How do you know him?" Molly stood with a hand on one hip and a skeptical look on her face. She and Nevaeh were best friends, so she hadn't been very friendly with Dawn the past couple months, either.

"He's her neighbor," Janice said dismissively. "She's totally got a crush on him."

"Shut up, Janice!" Dawn hissed. "God, I do _not_."

Molly rolled her eyes and linked arms with Nevaeh. The other girls, like always, took their cue from those two, and the group moved as one down the street. Janice shrugged apologetically and hurried to catch up with them.

Dawn trudged along behind them, a scowl on her face. The attention had been nice for the whole three minutes it had lasted. Now she was, for all intents and purposes, invisible again. It was what she was used to; it just sucked, was all.

"Come on, Summers," Janice called. "We're gonna miss first bell."

Dawn glanced up and saw that the other girls were already heading into school; Janice was half a block ahead of her and gesturing for her to hurry. She took a few quick steps, then came to a stop. "I don't care," she said to herself. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized how true they were. She didn't care if she was late for school-in fact, she didn't care if she never made it to school again. It was a stupid place full of stupid people, and she didn't know why she had to bother. She made up her mind right then that she wouldn't.

"See you!" she yelled at Janice. Then, with a bounce in her step and a smile on her face, Dawn headed away from school as quickly as she could.

* * *

><p>When the doorbell rang, Buffy nearly dropped the plate she was washing. She was pretty sure she'd never heard that sound in this house before. It was a far cry from the days of living at home, when she and Dawn both had a constant stream of friends in and out of the house. Joyce had always encouraged them to invite anyone they liked to their house; she seemed to naturally befriend and mother everyone who came through her door.<p>

Buffy blinked away the sudden tears that stung her eyes. She rinsed the plate and set it in the drain rack. The doorbell pealed a second time as she walked to the door. Buffy yanked the door open to reveal Spike standing on her doorstep. An unlit cigarette dangled from his lips.

"Morning, kitten," he said. He plucked the cigarette from his mouth and tucked it behind his ear. "Hope I didn't drag you out of bed." Spike leaned against the door frame, arms crossed, as he looked her up and down. His lips curled up in an amused grin, and Buffy realized she'd been patting at the mess that was passing for a hair-do this morning.

She dropped her arms to her sides. She didn't care how messy her hair was; it didn't matter one little bit what Spike thought of her. She really shouldn't have to remind herself of that. "No, I was just doing the dishes."

They stared at each other for an awkward moment before Spike straightened up. "Mind if I come in?" he asked. "Thought we could talk." He took a step forward, and Buffy hesitantly moved aside to allow him entry.

The room immediately felt smaller. It was silly, really. Spike wasn't a _large_man, by any standards. He stood barely a head taller than Buffy herself. But there was something about his nervous energy and ample attitude that sucked all the air out of the room. Buffy watched him prowl about. He walked to the fireplace and examined the family photos that hung above the mantel. His hands tapped a rhythm against his jean-clad thighs. He picked up the Kokopelli statue, turned it over twice, and replaced it on the mantel. Next he reached for a purple glass butterfly-one of Dawn's keepsakes.

"Spike. What did you want to talk about?" She made her tone deliberately icy. Rude, yes, but there was no help for it; she didn't want any repeats of last night. That way lay nothing but trouble.

He quickly put the butterfly down and turned around. "Gave Dawn a lift to school this morning."

Buffy nodded. "I kind of figured. It had to be either you or her friend, and I can't see Janice making that much effort this early in the morning."

Spike let out a snort of laughter. At her curious glance, he said, "Met her this morning. She's … bold."

"That's a word for it." She smiled at his exasperated expression. "Thanks for taking Dawn to school."

"No problem. I was out and about anyway." He moved across the room and came to stand in front of her, almost too close for comfort. "Did you think any more about last night?"

Buffy gulped. His eyes were just as blue as she remembered. "Last night? I don't … I mean, we didn't … What about last night?"

The way he chuckled at her obvious discomfort made her want to punch him. Or kiss him. But she wasn't doing either of those things, she reminded herself, because they were both bad choices.

"You took off, is all. And I didn't think we were nearly done." Spike edged a little closer to her. Buffy instinctively backed up until she felt a wall behind her back.

"There was more to … do?" How on earth did he manage to make her feel like a schoolgirl with just a look? Admittedly, he had that whole smoldering, sexy eyes thing going on, and with his hair all ruffled and mussed like that, he exuded a sort of just-rolled-out-of-bed charm. It wasn't fair.

"I thought you were going to let me-"

"Let you what? Kiss me? Because that's so not what was going to happen. I was ... I was just upset, or I never would have-" She broke off when Spike's shoulders started shaking with laughter. She narrowed her eyes. "What's so funny?"

"I was going to say, I thought you were going to let me help you." He arched an eyebrow. "But nice to know you'd _never _unless there were extenuating circumstances. Does a fella's ego good."

"That's not what I meant," Buffy protested.

"Ah, so you _would_, then?" Spike leaned in towards her, a teasing smirk on his face. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then let his thumb drag down her jawline.

Buffy was tempted to let him continue what he was doing. She'd own up to a certain amount of curiosity about him-about how he'd move, how he'd taste, how he'd touch her. _No. Bad, bad Buffy. _With great effort, she tapped into an inner resolve and planted both hands on his chest in order to push him away. "Will you stop? You know _that's_not what I meant, either."

He shrugged and jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "Your loss, pet," he said with a smirk.

"I'm sure. You're god's gift, right?"

"Nah, wouldn't be nearly as interesting if I were." Spike looked at her, an intent and serious gaze that she found difficult to hold. Then he nodded, as if he'd gotten the answer to some unspoken question, and took a step back. "Just wanted to let you know the kid got to school safe and sound this morning. You have a good day, love."

Buffy felt a sting at the dismissal in his words. She reached out and grabbed his arm when he started to walk away. "Spike. Thank you. I … I'm really happy Dawn has another adult in her life that she can trust."

Spike smiled at that, a genuine, warm smile that was completely different from the grins and smirks he'd favored her with so far. "That's … well, that's something, Summers," he said. "Maybe you moving in here wasn't such a bad thing, huh?"

"Maybe not," Buffy agreed. She returned his smile before releasing his arm. "Spike, if you … I mean, if you're serious about helping with Dawn-"

"I am," he said.

"Okay." She took a deep breath and looked up into his clear blue eyes. "I meant what I said last night. I can't do this, I feel like … like every choice I make for her is something else she's going to hate me for. But you- Maybe it's because you're not family, she doesn't have to live with you or anything. But I think … I think you could …" Oh god, she was going to have to say it. Best to just do it and get it over with. "Youcouldbeagoodinfluenceonher."

Spike laughed. "My, my, how things have changed."

"Don't make me change my mind," Buffy warned, but without any heat in her voice. Was she flirting with him? She was a little afraid she might be.

He sobered at her words. "Wouldn't dream of it," he said. "Truce, then, yeah?" He held out his hand. Buffy took it without hesitation, and they shook on it.

* * *

><p><em><em>_This is the last chapter I have completed. I am continuing work on this story, but RL has been a bit hectic lately with the holidays. Thanks everyone for reading thus far, and thanks so much for the reviews. I am planning to update as regularly as possible; I apologize in advance if it's a little erratic. _


	12. Chapter 12

AN: Hello, dear readers. I know it's been way too long between updates, and I sincerely apologize. This chapter was ... well, sort of like pulling teeth, only with the added bonus of copious amounts of bourbon and beers.

I have to give a GIGANTIC thank you to both Puddinhead and Minx DeLovely. Seriously, if it weren't for those two, you would not be reading this right now. Or possibly ever. So if you appreciate their enthusiasm and encouragement as much as I do, go check out their stories (and make sure you leave a review!)

That being said, I do hope you enjoy this update. This chapter includes a scene I'd been planning since the start of the story, though the characters still managed to throw a surprise or two in there for me.

Some dialogue lifted from "Tough Love."

* * *

><p>Buffy peered into the coffee urn; nothing but sludge left from the morning. No one had ordered any during the lunch rush, so it hadn't been an issue. It was closing in on two-thirty, however, and the Senior Citizen Brigade would be descending soon, expecting fresh, hot, half-priced cups of caffeinated goodness. They lined up every afternoon, four or five or six women, depending on the day, and the same two men. The men sat in the center of the large corner booth and spoke rarely as the surrounding women chattered away, rehashing the same topics in new and fascinating ways every day.<p>

Buffy could never figure out the appeal: who would voluntarily drink the road tar the Doublemeat Palace passed off as java, regardless of how cheap it was? Their routine was at once baffling and comforting to Buffy, and watching them every day made her more than a bit wistful. She missed the days when she and Willow and Xander were joined at the hip, when she knew that every night would be spent with her friends, scrutinizing the various events of their days. That was back before Anya and Tara, though, before Joyce's illness and—

Buffy halted her thoughts. Not like she had any events to report these days. _I cored and sliced forty pounds of tomatoes this morning! Then, I got to clean out the grease traps. The highlight of my day was making coffee. Whoo-hoo!_She mechanically changed the filter and emptied a new foil packet of grounds into it before flipping the switch and setting the beverage to brew. She wiped up the counter around the coffee station, but her mind was replaying the night before.

_"Hey, Buffy!" Dawn greeted her from the front door of Spike's house, a slim shadow against the warm glow of the foyer light. Buffy smiled at her sister; she'd barely had a chance to ring the doorbell before Dawn had beaten a path to the door and flung it open._

Five days and counting,_ Buffy thought. For the past five days, there had been no trace of the sullen, moody teenager she had come to know and loathe. Buffy knew it wouldn't last much beyond a week. Dawn's period was due, and that, if nothing else, would turn her back into a raging ball of hormones, putting an end to this pleasant reprieve._

_"How was work?" Dawn asked. "School was pretty lame, go figure. We're having hamburgers for dinner tonight, but don't worry, they're not gross. You'll like them. There's feta and pesto in them, and they're super easy to make. Oh, and I made French fries—from scratch! I'm going to make a shopping list for you for next week, so I have stuff to cook dinner, okay?"_

_Buffy nodded and smiled as Dawn's cheerful monologue rambled along unchecked. She followed her sister into the kitchen. The aroma that filled the room elicited a responding growl from Buffy's stomach, putting to rest any concerns she had about being faced with burgers after her months in the fast-food industry. There might have been a little drool, too, though that response was as much for the lean figure in black leaning over the table as the enticing scent wafting from the plate he was setting on the table._

_Spike straightened up and welcomed Buffy with a nod and a wink. Her smile widened as she slipped into what was quickly becoming _her_ place at her neighbor's table. She looked at Dawn and Spike's faces, and she didn't feel alone. She felt like she was with … family. It was a good feeling. _

"… and a large chocolate shake. Did you get all that?"

Buffy glanced up at the man standing in front of her, a little boy clinging to his hand. She blinked and looked down at her register. "Um, a Doublemeat Medley meal, supersized, with a Coke, and a kids' Medley Junior meal with a large chocolate shake," she read off the screen. He nodded, pleased, while Buffy inwardly cringed at her ability to find the right buttons on her register, even as her mind lingered in Spike's kitchen. "Would you care for dessert with that today?"

The man shook his head, paid his tab, and moved down the counter to wait for his meal. Buffy glanced at the clock, willing the hands to hurry along. Two and a half more hours until the end of her shift and freedom—and a cooking lesson at her neighbor's house. She ignored the quiver in her belly at the thought of spending the whole evening with Spike.

"Buffy, you have a telephone call." Manny's stern voice interrupted her thoughts. She shrugged off his disapproving glare and slipped by him into the office, where the phone lay on the desk.

"This is Buffy." She spoke quietly, aware of her manager's presence behind her. She could practically hear him counting off the seconds. No doubt he would deduct this time from her hours for the day. If it was Dawn and she wasn't seconds from a fiery death or missing a limb, there would be hell to pay when she got home.

"Miss Summers, this is Principal Stevens. I'm sorry to disturb you at work, but you haven't responded to any of the messages I've left for you."

The unexpected voice sent a trill of fear through her. "Messages? I don't … I'm sorry, I never got a message from you. I would have … is everything all right?"

There was a pause in which Buffy heard the rustle of papers before the woman continued. "Miss Summers, my secretary has placed three calls to your house. I called you myself yesterday morning. It is imperative that we meet to discuss Dawn's situation. Is it possible for you to be here at the end of the school day today?"

"Oh, today? Um …" Buffy dared a peek over her shoulder. Manny still stood guard in the doorway of the office. He gave a pointed glance at the clock, tapping his wrist impatiently.

"It's very important." Ms. Stevens' tone plainly stated that she wouldn't take 'no' for an answer.

"I … of course. Yes. I'll be there." She hung up the phone and took a deep breath before turning to face her employer. He began to speak, but Buffy cut him off before he could get going.

"That was my sister's school. I have to leave to meet with the principal." She smiled up at Manny; cheerful and non-confrontational, that was her. "I know you understand. I mean, you have kids. Right?" A quick look around the office confirmed the absence of anything hinting at a life outside the confines of the restaurant. "Or not, I guess? I'll … I'll work a double tomorrow," she promised rashly. "I know we're short." The angry flush receded from Manny's face, and Buffy felt safe to hurry out of his sight.

She stopped quickly in the locker room to lose her ridiculous hat and run a comb through her hair. She only wished she had time to run home and change into something that said 'responsible guardian' rather than 'minimum wage drone'. Buffy shook her head as she got into her car and headed for the high school. She had more important things to worry about than how she was dressed. Exactly how dead she was going to make her little sister was at the top of that list at the moment.

* * *

><p>Dawn squirmed in her chair as both Ms. Stevens and Buffy fixed her with hard glares. Well, Buffy's was definitely hard, maybe even granite-y, while a hint of sympathy glinted from behind Ms. Stevens' glasses.<p>

"Dawn, you lied to me?" Buffy's voice cracked on the words.

"I … I didn't lie, exactly." She dared another glance at her sister. Big mistake. Buffy was angrier than Dawn could ever remember seeing her.

"Really. What about all the times I asked you how school was and you said 'fine'?"

Dawn flinched at the harsh tone. "Well, it was. You didn't ask if I was in it when it was fine." The words fell flat even as they came out of her mouth. She gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders and tried to smile gamely under the twin barrels of Buffy's glower and Ms. Stevens' impassive stare.

"Dawn, I don't—" Buffy started to speak, but quickly cut herself off. She shook her head at Dawn, who could almost hear the words that Buffy didn't say: _I'm not angry, I'm disappointed_. If only that were the case. Buffy might act more sorrowful and hurt than spitting mad in front of the principal, but Dawn sensed that she was going to be in for it when they got somewhere private.

Buffy abandoned her steady perusal of Dawn's guilty face and turned to Ms. Stevens. "I don't know what to say. How … how did it get to this point without me knowing about it?"

Ms. Stevens shuffled through the file folder laying open on her desk. "I would like to know the same thing. We have an automated system that does alert parents and guardians to any unexcused absences. Here, this is the number we have listed for your primary contact." She passed a paper to Buffy, who examined it quickly.

"This isn't our phone number." Buffy held the page up in front of Dawn. "Do you know anything about this? You turned in the change of address form when we moved. You didn't, oh, change any other information on here, did you?"

Dawn sank down in her chair. She really didn't want to be having this conversation. "I maybe sorta put Janice's cell phone number down instead of ours." She mumbled her answer toward the floor, but the lack of follow-up questions let her know she'd been heard.

This was easily the lamest day she'd had in a long time. She wished Janice hadn't thought to give her a heads up about the principal's call yesterday. She would have been oodles happier skipping this meeting altogether. But no, she'd decided maybe she should show up for school, since Ms. Stevens was threatening to call a meeting with Buffy. Not that being at school for one day after missing a week would be enough to get her off the hook. She should have known better.

"I am so sorry," Buffy said. To Ms. Stevens, of course, not to Dawn. No one ever apologized _to _Dawn—they just apologized _for_her. "You know if I had been aware that Dawn was skipping school, I would have done something about it before it got to this point. I'm … I'm sure you're aware that the past few months have been hard for Dawn. Not that I'm saying that's an excuse."

"I understand. Your mother was a lovely woman, and we all miss her very much." Dawn looked up just in time to catch Ms. Stevens' warm smile in her direction. "I know how difficult it must be."

That was a joke. Dawn barely stopped herself from laughing derisively. Sure, Ms. Stevens meant well, but she didn't understand anything. People said things like that all the time—_I feel your pain, I get what you're going through, I understand how you feel_—but it was all a bunch of lies. No one got it, no one could possibly know how Dawn felt.

"It is," Buffy answered. "It's been very difficult, but especially for Dawn. She's … she's just a kid."

Dawn glared at her sister. _I'm not a baby! _Buffy would never admit that, though.

Ms. Stevens folded her hands together on her desk and looked from Buffy to Dawn. "I think we all know that Dawn is much more than 'just a kid'," she said. "She's a bright young lady with a sharp mind. When she applies herself, she does exceptionally well, and she has the potential to be an asset to our school."

Dawn flushed under the unexpected praise and shot a triumphant glance in Buffy's direction.

"However, we have seen little evidence of Dawn's abilities this semester." Ms. Stevens' brow furrowed. She looked at Dawn from over the rim of her glasses, all trace of the mild and sympathetic principal gone. Any pleasure Dawn had felt at her previous words swiftly vanished. "Her teachers report that her homework has been spotty, at best. And of course, it is very difficult to learn if one is not in school."

Buffy and Ms. Stevens began to discuss exactly how to insure Dawn would show up for school and complete her homework. She tuned out of the conversation at that point. Not like anyone wanted her opinion on things—after all, it was only _her_life they were discussing. Why should what she thought matter? Besides, her preference—no more school or homework. Ever.—was one they probably wouldn't agree to.

"Dawn," Ms. Stevens interrupted her sulk, "why don't you wait outside for a minute?"

Dawn blinked and looked at Buffy. It wasn't at all reassuring to see the worried frown on her sister's face. "O-okay," she said. She stood slowly, trying to catch a glimpse of any glaring clues on the paperwork half-hidden beneath the principal's hands. At Buffy's impatient cough, Dawn clutched her backpack in both hands and fled the office.

Five nerve-wracking minutes passed while Dawn wondered what Buffy and Ms. Stevens were talking about. Suspension? Expulsion? Summer school? Or maybe _Buffy_ was getting in trouble, too, but Ms. Stevens didn't want to yell at her in front of Dawn. _Nah_. She dismissed that idea. Buffy wasn't even a student; what could Ms. Stevens do to her?

Finally Buffy emerged from the office. She closed the door firmly behind her and took a deep breath. She glanced briefly at Dawn, and then gave a sharp nod. Dawn took that to mean it was time to leave, particularly since Buffy followed the gesture with a swift exit.

Dawn trotted behind Buffy through the school and to the car, unwilling to break the frosty silence that lasted the entire way home. It wasn't until they stood facing one another in the living room that Dawn dared to open her mouth.

Buffy held up her hand, effectively silencing the apology Dawn had spent the car ride formulating. "I don't want to hear it." She hadn't looked at Dawn once since they had left the school, and she wasn't looking at her now. It gave Dawn an oogly feeling in the pit of her stomach to see Buffy so angry. "I can't talk to you right now. Just … go to your room. We'll deal with this later, when I can look at you without …"

Dawn nodded and obeyed without protest. Halfway up the stairs, she stopped and turned back to Buffy. "I'm sorry," she said meekly.

"Go. To. Your. Room."

Buffy was about to lose it; Dawn felt like she'd stumbled onto a frozen river and was watching the ice splinter beneath her feet. She gulped and sprinted up the stairs for the safety of her room, where she threw herself across her bed. She reached for her favorite stuffed animal, a ratty-eared dog, and turned her face into her pillow in an attempt to stifle the sobs that tore through her.

* * *

><p>Spike experienced a moment of deja vu when he opened the door to reveal Buffy in full-on brassed-off mode. Just like the day she'd moved in, she was fuming; smoke was practically pouring out of her ears. The only difference he could see was that she was dressed in her ugly-as-sin work uniform instead of short-shorts and a skimpy top. He tried out a friendly smile in the hopes of shaking her out of her mood.<p>

She shoved past him into the foyer without waiting for an invite. "I thought you were taking Dawn to school!" she snapped by way of greeting. She planted her hands on her hips and glowered at him.

"And hullo to you, too, pet." He closed the door, and the quiet _snick _of the latch catching echoed through the foyer. Spike turned to Buffy and waited for some indication that she had any manners at all.

"Dammit, Spike! I thought you were going to help me, and instead—" Her voice caught and cracked, and she bit her lip.

He took a step toward her, confused and now a little concerned. He'd been expecting her and Dawn for supper, but she was over an hour early; she shouldn't have even been out of work yet. "What's going on?" he asked. "Is everything all right?"

She shook her head and gave a cold laugh that scraped his nerves raw. "No. And I want to know what the hell you've been doing with my sister."

"What I've been—" He didn't like the accusation in her voice; it set him on edge, got his defenses up. "What exactly is that supposed to mean?"

"God, I'm such an idiot." She paced back and forth in the hallway. "I just … you're so helpful and nice, always wanting to lend a hand. And I was desperate enough to let you."

Spike stepped into her path, bringing her frantic pacing to a sudden halt. "Buffy," he said, as calmly as he could, "we've been getting along. Being neighbors, yeah? So tell me what's going on. What's wrong?"

"What's _wrong_is that Dawn hasn't been seen at school for the past week. Ever since you started 'dropping her off' in the morning." Buffy glared up at him. "I just had a meeting with her principal, and no one has even seen her arrive at school, let alone attend any of her classes."

"Oh, that's—"

"Where has she been?" She stepped forward until they stood toe-to-toe.

"There's always this gaggle of girls in the morning, right? Dawn said she wanted to walk the rest of the way to school with them." He shrugged. "Didn't seem like a big deal."

"Well, it _is_ a big deal! I _trusted_you with her."

"And I trusted her to go to school. My question is: why are you over here taking it out on me instead of talking to the person who's at fault?"

Buffy put her hands on his chest and shoved him as hard as she could.

Spike took a stumbling step backwards; his heel caught on the bottom riser of the staircase, and he landed on his arse. The impact rattled his teeth; to add insult to injury, he bit his tongue at the same moment he bruised his tailbone. Worse than the physical damage, though, was the odd sense of betrayal he felt. He'd thought he'd seen Buffy Summers at her worst. Thought she'd gotten past her defensiveness and bursts of temper. He'd thought they were becoming something more than neighbors—friends, if nothing else. Spike wanted to laugh at himself. Worrying about being _friends_with the crazy lady one door down while his rear end throbbed and his tongue oozed salty blood into his mouth.

He did nothing to hide his pain and irritation as he kipped to his feet in one fluid movement. Buffy flinched away from, and he tried not to take any pleasure in the look of horror and shock on her face.

"I'm … I didn't …" she stammered.

"Let me guess," he said acidly. "You're sorry. You didn't mean to. I'm bloody well not your sodding punching bag, Summers. Thought we'd moved on to the using-our-words stage of our relationship."

"Spike, I …"

"You know what? You want something to pound on, you can find a better target." He wrapped his hand around her wrist. "In fact …" He led her into the kitchen and opened the door to the basement. "Come on. Let's get this out of your system."

She balked momentarily at the top of the dark staircase. Spike flipped on the lights and loosened his hold on her. "Come on," he said again, a little gentler this time. "We can't keep doing this."

Buffy nodded silently and followed him down the stairs. Not that he gave her much choice. He pulled a light cord at the bottom of the stairs, illuminating the utilitarian room. A punching bag hung in the middle of the room, centered over a gym mat. The only other furnishings were the washer and dryer and a simple folding table that held laundry detergent and a small stack of gauze cloths.

Spike retrieved two strips of gauze from the table. "Give me your hands," he said. "I'll wrap them for you." He took Buffy's right hand in his. He placed the end of the gauze between the delicate bones of her wrist and held it there. He could feel her pulse thrumming against his fingers as his other hand wound the strip twice around her wrist.

"Spike, this is sil—"

"Shush," he interrupted her. He didn't want to hear what she thought. He didn't want to fight with her. He wanted to watch his hands move over her smooth flesh, wanted to run his fingers down the pale blue trace of veins on her forearm. His fingers looked too rough, too large against her smaller digits, and his chipped black nail polish only heightened the incongruity of their contact.

_Six days_, Spike thought. He kept his attention focused on what his hands were doing, not even daring to look up at her lest he lose his temper. It had been six days since they'd declared a truce—for Dawn's sake, or so she wanted to believe. Spike knew it wasn't just that. The way he thought about being her friend—the way he wanted to be a part of her life—told him there was more to this than wanting to help a girl who reminded him of what he'd lost.

It had been over six years since Ellie had died and his family had imploded. In all that time, he'd never allowed himself to be close to anyone the way he'd been with Buffy and Dawn over the past six days. The way he'd been with his sister and his mother, before—

He'd reached the end of the first wrap. Buffy's right hand was securely wound, the gauze providing support and cushion for her knuckles and metacarpals. He took hold of her left hand and repeated the process.

_Six days._That was all it had taken. Six days of smiles and friendship and jokes, six days of sharing her burden, being part of something—feeling like a member of a family again. Sometime in those six days—

_Be honest,_ he instructed himself. _Started the moment you saw her._

True. That feisty girl he'd met—was it only three months ago?—had managed to make an impression from word one. Between that first meeting and the past six days, he was a goner.

Spike was head over heels in love with Buffy Summers.

And she didn't care two figs for him.

"There," he said, and he patted her hand one last time before letting her go. "Go beat up something that'll stand for it." He met her eyes and was meanly gratified to see tears threatening to spill down her cheeks.

"I _am_sorry, Spike," she said.

"You say that a lot." He took her shoulders in his hands and steered her toward the punching bag. "Maybe you should work on not needing to apologize so much."

Buffy shot him one more kicked-puppy-dog look over her shoulder before squaring off with the heavy bag. "This is stupid."

"It's not stupid. You're peeved, you want to punch something, I don't want to be that something." He circled the bag until he stood opposite Buffy. "So go on. Hit it."

She punched the bag, but so weakly it barely even moved.

"Come on, Summers. We both know you got more in you than that. You hit me harder than that the first day we met, and I'd hardly done anything yet."

"Key words being 'hardly' and 'yet'," Buffy said. She took another swing at the bag. It was less pitiful than the first, but not by much.

"Give it up, pet. You know I'm your favorite bloke in the world." _I wish_. "I can sketch you a picture of my face and tape it to the bag, if that'd help motivate you." He eyed her closely as he spoke. "But it's not me you're angry at, is it?"

"You wanna make a bet?" She landed a quick, fierce jab on the bag, then fell back into a relaxed fighting stance. She danced lightly on the balls of her feet as she brought her fists up in front of her face. "You told me." She threw a left jab. "You took Dawn." A right hook. "To school." A solid uppercut. Buffy stepped back from the bag and met Spike's eyes. "So yeah. I'm a little pissed off."

He smirked and shook his head. "Yeah, but not at me." She opened her mouth, no doubt to detail exactly why he was the only person to blame for Dawn's behavior, but he forestalled her. "You think it would've made any difference if I'd marched that kid up to the school doors? Maybe I should have escorted her from class to class all day, just to make sure she stayed in school."

"I told you this was stupid," Buffy muttered, and started pulling at the gauze wrapped around her left hand.

Spike covered the space between them in a second and captured her hands in his. "Stop. Just … I'm telling you, Buffy, this, whatever it is, between us? It's gotta change. So try again, yeah?" He released her hands and stepped away until he stood behind her. He watched the slope of her shoulders and the way she let her head hang as she took a few deep breaths. Then she moved into that same neutral stance as before and circled around the bag.

The room was quiet except for the squeak of Buffy's shoes on the mat and the solid _smack _of her fists landing a series of punches on the bag. Spike watched her with growing admiration. She knew what she was doing, that much was clear. She kept herself moving and kept her hands up as she did. Then she surprised Spike with a roundhouse kick that set the bag swinging wildly. Buffy danced back from the arc of the bag. A smile so natural it looked unconscious lit up her face.

"Feels good, doesn't it?" Spike commented. She shrugged her shoulders and laid into the bag again without answering. That was enough for him. He wished he'd thought of this months ago. Maybe his car would have escaped the Wrath of Buffy if she'd had an alternative outlet for her emotions. "You want to share? Tell me what's really making you mad, now we've established it's not me?"

"Where to start?" Her tone was bitter, but she didn't cease her rhythmic attack. Three punches, fall back and move a quarter turn to the left, four punches and another kick. Even in the hideous uniform, she moved as if she'd been born to it. Her speech was punctuated with the sound of her fists connecting with the bag. "How about … Dawn's been lying to me for months. She put her friend's cell phone down as our number so I wouldn't get any calls from the school about her attendance."

Spike winced. But at least that was something she couldn't pin on him. "What's going to happen with that? She get suspended, or—"

Buffy halted her movements mid-punch and glanced at him. "No. They're not … we decided giving Dawn a free vacation wasn't the best idea."

He chuckled at that. "Yeah, probably not."

She sighed and executed another kick. Spike tried not to stare, but damn, she looked good.

"Where'd you learn the fancy footwork?" he asked.

"I took martial arts for twelve years." She moved back into her previous rhythm. She was starting to work up a sweat, and Spike watched a bead of moisture trickle down her neck into the collar of her shirt. "I wanted to open a dojo, actually. I was working on a business degree with a phys ed minor until Mom got sick." That statement was followed by a particularly vicious set of punches and kicks.

"Had to give it up, huh?" Spike edged around the mat as Buffy assailed the bag, mirroring her movement so he kept her in his sights.

"Had to take care of Mom and Dawn," she said shortly.

"Hard to do, I bet." He kept his voice casual. She wasn't looking at him; she was focused on the bag, on where to place her feet and her hands. "Putting your plans on hold like that."

"It was supposed to be for a semester." _Smack_. "She had to have surgery." _Smack_. "Someone had to … Dawn couldn't do it, you know?" Buffy's breath came quicker even as her hits slowed down. "So I dropped out and moved home. And then …" _Smack, smack._Her words ceased, and the punches and kicks picked up again.

Spike wanted to nudge her along, get her talking again, but he wasn't sure she'd even hear him. She looked to be in her own world as she worked the heavy bag. He waited and watched, instead. Her golden curls had darkened with sweat, and a few strands clung to her face. She circled the bag steadily, and Spike could see the fighter in her. He imagined himself facing off against Buffy, sparring with her, and his body stirred at the thought. Would she go for that? Maybe. Seemed to take any excuse she could get to lay her hands on him.

"She promised I'd be back in school this fall." Buffy's ragged voice interrupted his pleasant daydream; he tucked it away for later. She stood before the bag, suddenly flat-footed and graceless. Her gaze was unfocused, and her hands hung limply at her sides. "That was our deal. It was important to her that I finish college." She looked up to meet his eyes. He hated the emptiness on her face. The smile from earlier was long gone.

"You can still do that," he said quietly. He moved slowly across the mat until he stood next to her. She dropped her eyes to her hands and again plucked at the gauze wraps. Spike didn't stop her this time, but took her left hand and began to unwind the wrapping. "Nothing to keep you from going back to school, right?"

"Sure. Nothing stopping me." Her words were soft, but full of venom. She yanked her hand away from his and finished the job of unwrapping the gauze. "There's just my kid sister who I've got to keep fed and clothed and …" Buffy started in on her right hand. Her movements were jerky and impatient; whatever tension she had vented during her session with the punching bag was coming back in spades. "I never wanted to … I wasn't one of those girls who dreamt about having kids someday, you know? But I promised, I told Mom I'd take care of Dawn if anything ever happened to her. I figured … she was getting better. She was ... it was a 'just in case' thing, like making plans for her funeral. It wasn't … she wasn't _supposed _to die. She said she was fine, every day she was getting better, and then …"

Spike was unprepared for the onslaught of Buffy's tears. The sobs burst out of her, shaking her entire body. She covered her face with her hands and wailed into the crumpled gauze she still held. He stood next to her, wanting nothing more than to pull her into his embrace and soothe her until the storm passed. Now that he understood exactly what it was he felt for her, watching her suffer was like taking a knife in the chest. Her pain ripped through him like a physical thing.

Finally, Spike threw caution to the wind and slipped an arm around Buffy's shoulders. Her breath hitched at the contact, but then she turned so her forehead rested against his chest. He put his other arm around her and tugged her close to him. "It's okay," he murmured. He dipped his head so his mouth was next to her ear. "Let it all out, love, that's it." They stood there for several minutes as she cried out her sorrow and Spike whispered soft words of encouragement to her.

Buffy mumbled something he couldn't quite make out. He pulled back a bit and tipped her chin up. Her eyes were blood-shot and puffy, and her nose was dripping snot. She was still the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. "What was that?"

She swiped at her tear-stained cheeks and runny nose with the gauze. Her eyes flickered up to meet his, then settled on his chest. Her voice, when she finally spoke, was flat, devoid of the emotion that had animated her just minutes ago.

"They're going to take Dawn away."


	13. Chapter 13

Thanks as always to my awesome betas: Minx DeLovely, Puddinhead, and Tennyoelf.

Thanks also for all the reviews! Really helps feed the muse (and my insatiable need for validation).

Some dialogue lifted from "Tough Love"

* * *

><p><em>They're going to take Dawn away.<em>

It was only as the words rang in her ears, her lips still parted on the final syllable, that the true import of Ms. Stevens' warning registered with Buffy. Fresh tears sprung to her eyes, and she instinctively covered her face with her hands again. The gauze wadded up in her fists was soaked through already with tears and—_yuck_.

She dropped the cloth to the ground and stared at it where it lay next to her feet. She tried to ignore the fact that Spike was watching her have a complete meltdown. That was hard to do when his bare, white feet were toe-to-toe with her practical work shoes and his arms were wrapped around her. Then his arms receded from her shoulders. She felt bereft at the loss of contact—doubly so when his feet walked away from hers. She heard the soft pad of his tread on the cement floor, then the squeak when he stepped back onto the mat. He pushed something soft into her hands—a small towel. She took it, wishing she were brave enough to take his hand at the same time. She hadn't felt as if she would fly to a million pieces when he was holding her.

Buffy wiped at her eyes futilely; the tears wouldn't stop. She was strangely calm, though, even as the tears poured down her face. She looked up at Spike, met his eyes, and began to speak. Her voice was steady and modulated, empty. "I keep thinking: _Mom would be so disappointed_. I'm supposed to be taking care of her, and I'm not doing it. But at the same time, I can't help thinking it's her fault. My mom's fault. She—" Buffy's voice wavered. Her fragile control over her emotions snapped—no stronger than the gossamer filaments of a spider's web. "I'm so … sometimes I get so _angry _at her. She had to have known I couldn't do this, and she still left me, and I can't help hating her for it."

She stopped her words by clapping a hand over her mouth. She wished she could take those words back, erase the memory of them from Spike's mind. He was going to think she was terrible. She _was_terrible.

He'd told her only a few days ago that she didn't care what he thought of her. At the time, she'd thought that was probably true: she could tell him anything, even all the deep-down, mean, nasty things that she was half-afraid to admit were there, and it wouldn't matter. His opinion didn't matter.

She felt like it mattered now. But this was _Spike_. She'd been awful to him from the day they met. He was right: she'd thought of him as a punching bag. A convenient body on which to release her anger and stress. Even after all of that, after her being—she could own up to it now—completely unreasonable for several months, he was here with her, listening to her, wanting to help her. As if, no matter what she did, no matter how horrible she was, she would still be someone he'd want to know.

He only smiled at her, his eyes soft and blue and accepting. "Oh, Buffy," he murmured. "That's natural, to feel that way. It's okay." Spike's hands curled under her elbows and pulled her closer to him.

She placed one hand on his chest. His heart thumped beneath her fingers. "It's not." She shook her head—he acted like he understood, but clearly he didn't. "I thought … I used to think, if Dawn went away, maybe that would be better for both of us. I can't tell you how many … you know, if I didn't have to take care of her, maybe I could go back to school. Do what _I_ want to do. Not … not work so much and worry all the time. How could I— She's my _sister_! She's the only family I have left, and I—"

Buffy leaned her forehead against Spike's chest and gratefully accepted the embrace he offered. He patted her back, then rubbed circles between her shoulder blades. It felt so good to be held, to lean on someone else, even if just for a little while. She let her eyes slip closed as he caressed her. He pushed her messy hair back from where it clung to her wet face, and his thumb stroked away the tears on her cheek. His soft voice murmured equally soft words in her ear. He urged her to relax, and her knees buckled beneath her.

"Not quite what I meant, love," he grunted as he caught her suddenly limp weight. He eased her down to the mat and knelt next to her as she continued to cry. How many tears could she possibly have? Buffy remembered the towel in her hand and brought it up to cover her face. She squeezed her eyes shut, blocked out as much light as possible, and simply existed in the moment. Spike's arms around her, his hands still moving in soothing patterns across her back. Spike's voice _shush_ing in her ear. The smell of Spike's cologne, and beneath that, the good male scent of his skin. Slowly, slowly, the flood slowed to a trickle, and her breathing evened out except for the occasional whimper. She tried not to move or think or feel.

"Buffy?" Spike spoke tentatively. His fingers carefully tugged her hair behind her ear and tugged at the towel which concealed her from view. "You're okay, yeah, love?"

She nodded, holding tight to her towel.

He tugged at it again, not so careful this time. "Talk to me, Buffy. Please."

It was the fright she heard in his voice that made her drop her security towel and meet his eyes. She'd forgotten: Spike cared about Dawn, too. Loved her, maybe? He treated her like a bratty but beloved little sister; Buffy couldn't deny that. Of course he'd be concerned. "They're going to take her away from me. Not right now. We get a … a probationary period, she called it. If Dawn goes to school and improves her grades and we pass a home inspection, I can keep her. But—"

Spike let out a shaky laugh. "You scared me half to death, pet. That's all you're worried about?"

Buffy's temper flared again. She sat up, pushing off the shelter of his arms. "That's _all_? That's … I can't do this! What don't you get? I'm going to fuck up, and they're going to take Dawn away, and—"

He grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her one quick, sharp shake. "No! No one is taking her away from you. Because you know what you have to do, and you're going to do it. You'll make her go to school; when she knows what's at stake, she'll play along. You know that. She doesn't want to leave you anymore than you want her to go."

He sounded so sure of himself. Sure of her. Buffy had to make him see. "Did you not hear what I said? I can't tell you how many times I thought my life would be so much easier without her."

"I heard you. Did you listen to yourself?" Spike stared at her, hands still on her shoulders. "You're angry. And it's okay to be angry, Buffy. Even at your mother, even for something that wasn't her fault."

"Don't … don't forgive me for that, Spike." Her voice was hollow, a good match for her insides.

"Oh, love," he said softly. There was a note in his voice that caught her attention, made her meet his eyes without flinching. He released her shoulders and cupped her face in his hands. His thumbs stroked lightly against her cheeks. "You think you have to be all goodness and light all the time? That if you have dark places inside you, you're not a good person anymore?" He leaned toward her until their foreheads rested together and she could feel his breath puffing over his lips as he spoke. "We all feel things we don't want to admit to. Thoughts that seem so awful you'd never expose them to the light of day. But that doesn't make you a bad person. I see you, Buffy—the way you are with Dawn. You'd do anything for your family. That's the kind of girl you are. If you weren't, you wouldn't be so torn up about this."

Spike lifted his head. His hands fell to her shoulders and moved down to squeeze her upper arms. When he pulled away from her, Buffy stopped him by mirroring his hold. She wrapped her hands around his biceps, her fingers sliding up beneath the hem of his t-shirt sleeves. His skin was warm and surprisingly soft.

"Buffy," he murmured. She caught her breath at the way he looked at her; something burned in his blue eyes. An answering something quivered in the pit of her belly. Even before he moved toward her, she knew he was going to kiss her. She licked her lips in anticipation.

At the last second, Buffy couldn't wait any longer. She surged forward and captured his mouth with her own.

* * *

><p>He stopped at the last moment. Much as he wanted to kiss Buffy—wanted to taste her and hold her—he knew it was a bad idea. There was too much messy emotion lying between them: his revelation unspoken but prominent in his mind, her pain on clear display in her green eyes. She needed him, but anyone would have done at the moment. He just happened to be the first person within easy reach—and a willing ear to boot. Then she moved toward him, <em>she <em>kissed _him_, and his will melted with the heat of her lips.

Spike moaned low in his throat and tightened his grip on Buffy's arms. He wanted to pull her flush against him. Hell, he wanted to throw her down on the thin gray mat and not let her up for at least the next two days. But he was sure the quickest way to make her stop kissing him was to force his hand. And—_bloody hell_—there was nothing he wanted more than to keep his mouth fused to hers as long as she would allow it.

He let his weight fall back on his heels. Buffy made a noise of protest, but then Spike tugged her forward so that she straddled his legs. It was an awkward position; he had to crane his neck to meet her demanding lips. She twined her hands into his hair, sucked on his bottom lip and made him gasp, then invaded his mouth with her tongue. She broke away for a quick breath before inching closer to him and kissing him again.

He needed to put a stop to this before they went too far. Buffy was vulnerable; he was taking advantage. Spike knew that logically, but the taste of her, the warmth of her body against his, overrode all rational thought. He let his hands slip around her waist, and he tugged her shirt out of her pants. He slid one hand over the small of her back. Her skin was like warm silk. He wanted to take off all her clothes and kiss every inch of her. Twice.

The taste of salt on his tongue brought him back to himself. Buffy's face was still wet with tears, and he was thinking only of holding her, touching her, kissing her. Spike pushed her away. It took some effort, but when she was sprawled on her bottom three feet from him, thinking became a lot easier. "Buffy," he started, but got no further.

She was on her feet in a flash, her eyes wide and horrified. In the next second, she turned and sprinted up the stairs. Spike stayed where he was until he heard the slam of the front door. Then he headed upstairs himself. He needed to talk to a bottle of bourbon right about now.

* * *

><p>Dawn cried until her eyes were gritty and dry and her nose was stuffed up. She lay on her bed for a time and sniffled miserably. Then she eased off the bed and crept to the door. She peeked into the hallway. "Buffy?" she said, barely above a whisper. When there was no response, Dawn let herself out of her room and hurried to the bathroom.<p>

She looked awful. Swollen eyes, puffy nose, splotchy cheeks, messy hair. Tears welled up in her eyes again as she stared at her reflection. "Stupid, stupid, stupid," she berated herself. Dawn blew her nose and splashed cool water on her face, all the time avoiding further glances in the mirror.

The house was still quiet when she opened the bathroom door. "Buffy?" she called again, a little louder this time. Nothing. She walked downstairs slowly, not wanting to make Buffy mad by leaving her room without permission.

She needn't have worried. The house was empty except for her. Dawn stomped back to her bedroom and slammed the door. She stood there for a moment, breathing heavily and trying to process her anger. She'd been on edge for the past twenty minutes, waiting for Buffy to burst in and start lecturing and yelling and grounding. Instead, she'd taken off and not even bothered to tell Dawn where she was going? That was typical. Why would Dawn need to know anything? She clicked on her stereo, selected a track from her favorite disc, hit play and cranked up the volume.

_I had enough, I had it tough._  
><em>I had enough of that crummy stuff.<em>

The next few minutes were a flurry of destruction. A pile of pillows and stuffed animals collected on the floor; the pink bunny she'd gotten from her father on her last birthday—when she was way too old for stuffed animals—hit the door with a soft _thud_and slid down to join its partners. The posters that hung above her bed were yanked down, leaving behind tattered corners held up with colorful tacks. She cleared her dresser with one sweep of her arm. Tubes of lipstick and eye shadow compacts went flying across the room. Dawn turned in a circle, panting and furious. A snow globe found its way into her hand. She hefted the weight of it in her palm and pulled her arm back.

The door opened a crack, then snagged on an animal head and stuck. Buffy squeezed her way through the opening, kicking at the obstacles in her way until she managed to get into Dawn's room.

"_What_are you doing?"

Dawn lowered her arm and studied the knickknack she held. It was a souvenir from a family trip to SeaWorld. She watched as the flecks of white slowly settled on a family of penguins inside the globe. She set the item on her dresser and turned her back to her sister. "Don't you knock?"

"Let's put that at the top of the list of Privileges You've Lost." Buffy made her way to the stereo and cut the power. "Now sit down."

Dawn grumbled quietly, but did as she was told, settling cross-legged onto her bed.

Buffy shifted aside a torn _Twilight_poster and sank down next to her. She looked tired, Dawn noticed. And her face was all red, like she'd been crying, too. "Doing a little redecorating?"

Dawn lifted her shoulders. "Whatever. I don't even like that movie. Vampires are lame."

Buffy took a look around the room. "Not too fond of your make-up collection, either, I see."

"Can we just get to it?" Dawn snapped. "Am I grounded or what?"

"I don't know," she said. There was a weary, resigned note in her voice that Dawn didn't like. "Would it do any good?"

"What do you mean?"

Buffy stared down at the comforter, plucked at a yarn tie. "I just don't know what to do. How to get you to understand that you can't lie to me. That you have to go to school."

"School is stupid." She spoke without thinking. Buffy's head snapped up, her eyes gleamed, and Dawn flinched back from the anger on her sister's face.

"How would you know that if you're never there? You can't— Dawn, what is it going to take for you to understand that you can't do whatever you want? Especially not since—"

"Since what?" Dawn dared Buffy to say it.

"Since Mom died."

They stared at each other as the words reverberated in their ears. Dawn took a hitching breath. "What does it matter what I do?" she said, finally.

"It matters." Buffy bit her lip before continuing. "Things have to change. Starting right now. You are going to go to school and come home. And that's pretty much the extent of your social life right there. I hope you had a really good time the past few months, because you're not having any fun until I'm convinced I can trust you again."

"What happened to thinking grounding me won't do any good?" Dawn folded her arms across her chest.

Buffy threw her hands in the air. "I don't know! I am at the end of my rope with you."

"Well, I'm _so _sorry you're stuck with me."

"I'm not stuck with you."

Dawn brushed away her sister's feeble protest. "Whatever. I know you're only taking care of me because Mom made you."

"That's not what I meant." Buffy's voice was quiet, but something in her tone captured Dawn's attention. "If I can't make you go to school, I won't be found fit to be your guardian anymore. They'll take you away from me."

"W-what?" Tears welled up in her eyes; she hadn't thought she could cry another drop today, but apparently she was wrong. "They can't— They wouldn't—" She had to stop for a moment to breathe. Questions tumbled through her mind, but the one that kept repeating itself, louder and louder, was: "Where would I go?"

Buffy shook her head. "I don't … Dad, maybe? Or foster care?" She looked up, and Dawn was shocked at the heartbreak in her eyes. "I didn't … I didn't really want to ask."

Everything fell away in an instant. Hating school and all the fake posers filling it, being treated like a little kid, being _talked about_—none of it mattered at that moment. All Dawn could think was that she'd lost her father, she'd lost her mother, and now she was going to lose Buffy. And that last one was all her fault. _Buffy_wasn't going anywhere; she looked, honestly, as devastated as Dawn felt. And it was completely avoidable. There was no reason anyone in authority should have even looked twice at them. Buffy was working hard at keeping them together. Keeping them a family. But Dawn had screwed it all up.

"They can't," she said again. Her lips were numb. "I won't. I won't go."

"I don't want you to." Buffy scooted across the bed and took Dawn in her arms. "I need you. You're … you're all I have left."

Dawn began to cry as her sister held her. "I'm so sorry," she managed to say between sobs. "I'll ... I'll be good. Just don't—" She wrapped her arms around Buffy and held on with all her might. "Don't let them take me away. Please." She could feel panic welling up in her chest. Her stomach felt tied in knots. "Buffy, promise me."

"Oh, Dawn." Buffy's voice was tinged with sorrow. "I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you don't go anywhere."

Dawn released her grip on Buffy and sat up. She used her sleeve to mop the tears off her face and sniffled in an attempt to clear her nasal passages. "But it's up to me," she said. She stared down at her lap, at her hands twisting together. "It's my fault we're in trouble." She glanced up. After a moment's hesitation, Buffy nodded.

The knot in her stomach tied itself a little tighter. Dawn clutched her hands to her abdomen and squeezed her eyes shut. "Can I be alone?" she managed to say without bursting into tears again. She wasn't sure how she managed it.

"Are you sure?"

Dawn nodded silently. She kept her eyes closed until she heard the door click shut behind Buffy. Then she jumped off her bed, retrieved her best stuffed animals, and hit 'repeat' on her cd player before climbing back in bed. She pulled the covers up over her head and cried until she fell asleep.

* * *

><p>Buffy moved through the house very carefully. She felt brittle, as if the wrong thought would break her, and she would collapse. She couldn't do that right now; she didn't have the luxury of having a meltdown. And so she simply didn't think about the wrong things. She filled her mind with the mundane details of her life and ignored the crisis the afternoon had unfolded before her.<p>

She stripped out of her work clothes and thought about the shift she had promised Manny she would cover tomorrow. There wasn't anything she wanted to do less than spend sixteen hours at the Doublemeat. The extra money would be nice, though. Dawn was growing out of all her clothes, and Buffy needed a better pair of work shoes. She climbed into the shower. That reminded her of the three hundred dollar water bill that had arrived in the mail yesterday. Images of new jeans and comfortable shoes vanished. Buffy sighed and slumped against the shower wall. She tried not to think about anything at all.

It was with a sudden spasm of guilt that Buffy realized, many minutes later, that the water was going cold. _Way to be wasteful_, she chided herself. She didn't bother with soap or shampoo, merely turned her face up to the chilly spray and let it wash away the last traces of her tears before turning the water off. She shivered as she stepped out of the shower; goose bumps prickled up on her arms and legs, and her nipples were painfully hard.

Buffy avoided looking in the mirror as she toweled the water off her skin. It would show her nothing she didn't already know: that she was too thin, that her hair was a damp tangled mess, that she was sporting permanent dark bags under her eyes. She couldn't bring herself to care about her appearance, though. It was difficult enough to go through the motions of untangling the snarls in her hair and brushing her teeth. Buffy wrapped the towel around her chest and headed for the sanctuary of her room and the oldest, comfiest sweats she could lay her hands on.

The steady thumping bass of a Ramones tune spilled out of Dawn's room. The same song was still playing when Buffy passed Dawn's door again; this time, she heard the conclusion of the song and gave a sigh of relief when it stopped. Her reprieve from punk rock was short-lived, however; the song started up again after a few seconds' pause. Buffy knocked very quietly on the door, then nudged it open.

The room was engulfed in an early-evening gloom. Through the gathering shadows, Buffy could make out Dawn's slim, still figure on the bed. She was asleep, even with Joey Ramone screaming in the background about the misery that was his life. Buffy rolled her eyes when she realized she'd just identified the band and the lead singer. One more thing to thank Spike for. She shied away from that thought and crossed the room to silence the stereo. She stopped at her sister's bedside to smooth the quilt over her shoulders. Dawn shifted at her touch, but didn't wake up. Her face was streaked with dried tear tracks.

Buffy eased her way out of the bedroom and downstairs. She supposed she ought to make something for dinner, though she didn't have any appetite to speak of. As she turned to head to the kitchen, a gentle rap sounded on the front door.

She opened the door and there stood Spike. He held a baking dish covered in aluminum foil. She stared into his blue eyes and tried not to think about why he was the other topic at the top of her _do not think about_list.

"I made this for you," Spike said. He passed the pan her way, and she instinctively reached for it. An unintelligible scrawl of numbers and letters was scribbled on the foil in black sharpie. Buffy realized she was looking at it upside down. She turned it around. '40 min 375,' she read. She glanced up at Spike.

"Figured you and the Bit, uh, Dawn wouldn't be coming for supper tonight." He shrugged. "It's lasagna. Take the foil off before you bake it."

Buffy saw a shiver pass through him; his pale arms were bare below the short sleeves of his black t-shirt, and the night was cool. She imagined asking him in. 'Come out of the cold,' she'd say, and he would step deliberately into her house. She could picture closing the door behind him, pushing him up against the door, latching her lips to his. He would put his arms around her and hold her tight. He would make everything else on her mind disappear. Buffy wavered—almost spoke—fought down the urge to invite him in. It was too tempting, especially now she knew what it was like to kiss him. The quick, hard contact the night she'd been too drunk to appreciate him and the fleeting, barely-there kiss they'd almost shared earlier this week had done nothing to prepare her for a real kiss from Spike.

He'd kissed her like he never wanted to do anything else.

It was almost enough to make Buffy clear her schedule so he could do just that. But there were bigger things at stake now than how much she really, _really_wanted Spike, so he stayed just outside her door. The toes of his scuffed boots scraped against the doorjamb. "Is Dawn okay?" he asked.

"She's … Well, she's asleep now," Buffy said. "She's upset, but I think she understands how serious this is."

Spike shoved his hands into his jean pockets. He cleared his throat and opened his mouth to say something. Buffy hoped he wasn't going to bring up what she'd done in his basement. She could feel her face growing hot as she thought of the way she'd thrown herself at him. If she weren't clutching a pan of lasagna so hard her fingers hurt, she'd probably be throwing herself at him right now.

"I'm sorry," she blurted, wanting to stop him before he could speak. "I shouldn't have … I'm sorry I pushed you. Did I hurt you?"

He shook his head and smiled at her. "Nah. I'm tough. I'd appreciate not having a repeat performance, though."

Buffy blushed. "I know. I won't … I won't do that anymore, okay?" The words came out in a hoarse whisper.

"About that." He leaned against the door frame, suddenly very close despite still being outside. "Was thinking—I go to a gym most mornings. Maybe you want to join me? Give you a chance to work off some energy, so you're not so tempted to beat me up."

The image of Spike working out—shirtless, sweaty, lifting weights, and had she mentioned _shirtless_?—filled her mind. She found herself nodding in agreement before consciously thinking about it. "That sounds … I like the idea," she stammered. She hoped it wasn't too obvious that _he_was the idea she liked. "Oh, but—"

She hated the objection her brain remembered to raise a few moments too late. Gyms meant memberships meant membership fees. Buffy bit her tongue before she admitted to Spike that she couldn't afford to be his gym buddy. It was embarrassing to be so concerned about money, especially when faced with someone who didn't seem to have any worries on that front. She didn't want him to offer to pay for her out of some weird sense of obligation. And she was afraid that if he did, she wouldn't have the strength of will to turn him down, which was just asking for trouble.

"But?" Spike prompted.

"I, uh, I'm working a double tomorrow. I don't think I have time." Buffy was impressed she managed to come up with a plausible excuse.

The smile on his face faded. "Maybe another time." He shivered again.

Buffy stepped back from the doorway. "I should let you go," she said. "Thanks for dinner and … and for earlier."

"You're welcome," he said. His deep voice rumbled through her. "And, Buffy—" He reached out with one hand and cupped her cheek very gently. She tried not to lean into his touch. "If you or Dawn need anything, even just to talk, I'm …" He pulled his hand back, his manner suddenly brusque. "Well, you know where to find me."

Buffy nodded as Spike turned away. She tried not to feel disappointed as she watched him disappear into his house.


	14. Chapter 14

First things first: HUGE thanks to my betas Minx DeLovely, Puddinhead, and Tennyoelf for their assistance, patience, and general hand-holding over the past couple weeks. I always feel like it's got to be frustrating to be my beta because I'm A) a consummate procrastinator, B) incredibly needy, and C) very slow at this writing thing (see A). But here we are with a new chapter, which I promise wouldn't be here without those lovely ladies.

Thanks to everyone who's been reading and reviewing; the feedback is fantastic and always, always welcome (see B above).

* * *

><p>The sun was just peeking over the horizon as Spike left his house. He paused outside his front door and looked toward the mountains. Pink fingers of light streaked across the twilit sky. It was a change from the drab atmosphere of London; there, it seemed every day was gray, weighted down with fog and pollution. Even after three years in California, he was nowhere near immune to the pull of vivid sunrises.<p>

He was still standing there, contemplating the sky, when Buffy emerged from her house. "Hullo," he said as she glanced his way. He spoke quietly, but his voice felt too loud in the still morning air. "You're out and about early."

She nodded and fumbled through her bag for her keys. "Work," she said. She smiled wearily. "Lucky me."

Spike shuffled his feet. Every cell in his body told him to go to her. He took three halting steps in her direction before she fixed her eyes on him. She had such a wary look about her, but he was drawn to her just the same. He closed the distance between them and looked down at her with concern. She looked so tired; her eyes were bloodshot and her cheeks were pale beneath a light dusting of makeup. He wanted to pull her into his arms; he wanted to tease her golden curls from the severe ponytail in which they were trapped.

He lit a cigarette to busy his hands and keep from touching her. "D'you want me to fetch Dawn after school?" he asked.

Buffy shrugged. "I, uh, I thought I'd call my friends, see if they can help out. I don't want to impose."

"It's not an imposition."

"I know. I mean, I know you don't mind helping with Dawn, and I really appreciate yesterday. I mean, you listening to me and everything, bringing us dinner—"

"Buffy." He'd heard enough nervous babbling. Time to just get it out in the open. "We kissed."

"So?" Her defensive tone stung him to the core, but made him more determined to put this to rest.

"Exactly." Spike swallowed his pride and forced the words out. "I know it didn't mean anything." He bit back the _to you _his heart so wanted to add. "You were upset, I get that. Doesn't change anything between us."

The relief on Buffy's face hurt more than it should. He knew she didn't feel about him the way he did about her, so there was no earthly reason to be wounded by her reaction.

"Thank you," she said quietly. "I didn't want to … to give you the wrong impression. I don't, I mean—"

He held up a hand. He might be in love with her; that didn't mean he could stand here and listen to her reasons for rejecting him. Even if she wasn't entirely aware that was what she was doing. "Don't worry about it." He took a long drag on his cigarette, then flicked the smoldering butt away. He nodded toward the house. "'S Dawn going to be up and ready for school by the time I get back from the gym?"

"Oh, well, her alarm is set." Buffy gnawed on her bottom lip. "Are you … you're sure this is okay? You've been doing an awful lot for us, and—"

He cut her off with a short laugh. "What else am I gonna do with myself? Don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not exactly in high demand anywhere else." And oh, that sounded a tad bitter. He went with it. "It's been … Buffy, you don't even know. I've been living my life in a fog, sleepwalking through my days. Going through the motions. And then you and Dawn show up, crash into my life—It's … it's like waking up from a long sleep. I haven't had anything—anyone—to care about in a long time." Here he couldn't help himself; he brushed his fingertips gently against her cheek. She flinched at his touch, and he drew his hand back quickly. "And I do, Buffy. I care about you."

Spike watched her shutter herself off, close up right before his eyes, and he tried to backpedal. "You and Dawn, you're … I hope you won't find it too odd if I say you've become very important to me." He cursed his stilted language, the way he stiffened at her withdrawal. He was such a fucking ponce. All it needed was for him to blurt out the words _I love you_, and his status as an unbearable ninny would be confirmed.

He wavered for a moment, those exact words on his tongue. What did he have to lose? He looked at Buffy, her arms folded around her and her eyes firmly fixed anywhere but on him. Right. Everything.

Dawn was the first person in years to break through his self-imposed solitary confinement. She'd managed to remind him of the man he used to be, the man who had a family. A sister. And then there was Buffy herself. When was the last time a woman had stirred anything within him other than transient lust? Spike couldn't remember.

He took a deep breath and stepped back. "I'm not saying don't call your friends. But I'm here for you, Buffy. Just … let me know what I can do, yeah?" His voice came out raspy; he cleared his throat.

Buffy nodded and shifted her bag from one arm to the other. "Thank you, Spike," she said quietly. "Um, I really have to—" She trailed off and gestured toward her car.

"Oh. Oh, yeah, of course. Off to the gym myself. So, I'll get Dawn, then?"

She nodded again, still looking a bit hesitant. "She has detention after school. So she'll be out late. Not til four or so."

"Like I said, pet, not much else I've got to do." Okay, so maybe he should go a little lighter on the pathetic loser-ness aspect of his life. "Have a good day at work, Buffy." By some supreme effort of will he didn't pull her to him for a parting kiss, but watched her get in her car and drive away.

* * *

><p><em>It didn't mean anything.<em>

She'd spent half of last night replaying their kiss in her mind, all the while telling herself over and over that it was a mistake. That it didn't mean a thing.

So why did it sting so much to hear the same words from Spike?

Buffy shook her head and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. She was obviously insane. Lack of sleep and stress were driving her up a wall. She shouldn't be _hurt_, for crying out loud—she ought to be relieved. Which she was. Extremely.

Only then he'd gone and said all that stuff about _caring_ for her and Dawn. And what did that mean? Was he lying about the kiss not meaning anything? Or was it … _oh, god_. He thought of her like a sister, that had to be what that little speech was all about. No wonder he'd pushed her away yesterday. He was probably totally grossed out. And who could blame him? Buffy blushed when she remembered—again—the disgusting way she'd jumped on him.

Except … He hadn't seemed disgusted. He'd kissed her back. Touched her. And then he'd brought her dinner. Okay, maybe that was more for Dawn's benefit than hers, but he'd still done it. She was confused, because what did he want from her? What did _she_ want from _him_? They'd developed an easy camaraderie over the past week, and it was tempting to continue to rely on him.

Buffy pulled into the Doublemeat parking lot and parked her car. Not for the first time, she wished for a job that took a little more brain power, something that would distract her from the tumult of thoughts filling her head. She'd spent the night before trying to suppress her undeniably lusty thoughts about Spike; while her worry for Dawn had distracted her, she'd still spent more time than she'd have liked focused on her neighbor. It would be easy to let him keep taking care of her and Dawn. But Buffy wasn't sure that was the best idea, not the way she was feeling about him. She just needed some space, some time, to let her emotions settle. There had been so much turmoil in her life for the past half year; the last thing she needed was an ill-advised affair with her neighbor. _That_ would be awkward when it was over.

She was going to call Willow—maybe Dawn could spend some time with her and Tara after school for a while. They were both so good at school, so enthusiastic about it; they were bound to be good for Dawn. She'd call them tomorrow. Today, Spike could get her to and from school. He'd probably give her a good scolding along the way. Odds were, that would make more of an impression on Dawn than anything Buffy might have to say.

Manny appeared at the employee entrance, arms folded and toe tapping impatiently. "Drama queen," she muttered, and slid out of her car with a resigned sigh.

* * *

><p>The piercing shrill of her alarm yanked Dawn from an unsettling dream. The details faded too quickly to capture more than a fleeting impression in her conscious mind: herself at her kitchen table, someone at the stove behind her, a creeping sense of dread. Her mother's eyes—<p>

Dawn darted out of bed and pressed play on her cd player. She swiped away a tear as the music blared from her stereo, chasing away the last fragments of the dream. She was glad Buffy wasn't here this morning to tell her to keep it down; she needed the noise to drown out the thoughts and memories circling in her mind.

"I wish I was someone else. I'm confused, I'm afraid, I hate the loneliness," Dawn wailed along with the Ramones as she hurried through her morning routine. She balked momentarily when she came to the kitchen door and flashed on her dream. Then she pushed past the unease and poured herself a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice.

She ate slowly, methodically, her mind whirling despite her determination to not think about anything at all. Dawn wondered what foster care was like, if it was really as bad as all those after-school specials and melodramatic teen novels made it out to be. That was probably just so they could sell books or ad space on a TV show or whatever; no way would kids get put in homes where they were going to be hurt. Right?

It was a stupid thing to worry about, anyway, so Dawn commanded herself to stop. A minute later, she found herself picturing her father—his broad shoulders and wide smile. And were his eyes blue, like Dawn's? It bothered her a little that she couldn't remember, and that she was wasting time imagining where he might be right now. Probably somewhere sunny; he always loved their trips to the beach.

It was a relief when the doorbell rang, though Dawn's stomach clenched at the thought of facing Spike this morning. He was probably going to be mad at her, too. She dropped her dishes into the sink with a clatter and quickly ran some water over them. Her spoon rattled into the bowl, _sploosh_, and she went to answer the door, a smile she didn't quite feel plastered on her face.

She dropped the cheerful expression when Spike didn't respond in kind. He muttered a curt "Let's go," and walked off to his car before she could even answer. Dawn gathered her things and hurried to catch up with him, sliding her arms into her coat as she walked.

"Thanks for taking me to school," she said once they were on their way. It was the wrong thing to say, she could tell that immediately from the sour expression on Spike's face when she broke the silence.

"Right. And you'll be attending all your classes today, will you?"

Dawn cringed at his sarcastic tone. "I'm sorry," she mumbled.

He shrugged and lit a cigarette. Dawn stared at him; he hardly ever smoked around her anymore, and when he did, it was always with a guilty look and a warning to never start smoking. "Yeah, well, you should be sorry," he said finally. His fingers tapped impatiently on the steering wheel as they waited at a red light. "What did you think was going to happen?" He took a drag off his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke before looking at her.

"I don't know," Dawn said. She shrank into her seat under the force of Spike's glower. "I guess I figured I'd get some detention and … But now they might take me away from Buffy. Did you know that?" Spike nodded. "Well, that's just stupid! How was I supposed to know they'd— I mean, it's not like anyone's lining up to take responsibility for me. _Buffy_ doesn't even want—"

"Don't you say that!" He tossed his cigarette butt out the window and turned to glare at her. Dawn was glad they were almost to the school; Spike was definitely driving angry. "Don't you think for even a minute that your sister doesn't want you around. This is killing her, worrying about you."

"Oh." Her voice was small. She fidgeted with the window crank, pushing it forward and backward. "I didn't think—"

"Too bloody right, you didn't think." Spike snorted, half-angry, half-amused. "And what exactly were you doing instead of going to school?"

"Oh, um, nothing." Dawn ducked her head. No one else had thought to ask her what she'd been doing. They were more concerned with what she _hadn't_ been doing. "Mostly I was at the library. Stuff like that."

They pulled up in front of the school. Spike put the car in park. He fixed her with a skeptical look, and Dawn rushed to defend herself.

"I'm serious! I know it's totally dorky, but I didn't know where else to go. There's only so much time even I can spend at the mall."

Spike looked at her and chuckled. Dawn let out a breath; maybe he wasn't too mad at her. "So, not off with your little boyfriend, then? Not gonna have to worry about another little Summers running around?"

"What?" It took a second to absorb his meaning. "Ew, Spike, no!" She blushed, though, because there was that one day, an afternoon spent riding around in the car with Jason and a couple of his friends. They had shared a moment, albeit one marred by his buddies arguing over the radio in the front seat. Jason had leaned over and whispered in her ear. Dawn had committed to memory the look in his eyes, the sound of his voice as he told her she was the sweetest girl in the world. Then he'd kissed her, a brief, chaste peck on the lips that was ended when the car hit a bump, knocking their heads together. They'd laughed about it, both rubbing at the knots on their foreheads. Dawn thought he might have kissed her again, only Brandon stretched an arm over the back seat and passed a joint into Jason's waiting hand. So yeah, that wasn't a story she would be telling Spike anytime soon.

"Right, well, let's keep it that way," Spike said. He watched her steadily for a moment. "Big Sis know yet that you've got a suitor?"

Dawn crinkled up her face. "A suitor? You really are Little Lord Fauntelroy, Spike." She was relieved when he laughed at that, too. "And no. Because Jason's not … he's not my boyfriend. I don't think. So don't say anything to Buffy. Please?"

Spike sighed. "You just keep yourself out of trouble, all right?"

"I will," Dawn said. She gathered up her bookbag and opened the door. "Thanks again for the ride and everything."

"Sure thing, pigeon." He smiled at her, and the last remnants of tension her her chest relaxed at his easy manner. "And Dawn—" He stopped her with a hand on her arm as she moved to get out of the car. "I don't want to see you go anywhere, either. Okay? So behave yourself."

Dawn had to fight off a sudden wave of emotion at his words. She wasn't going to cry today; she'd done enough of that yesterday. "I promise," she said.

Spike nodded, satisfied, and released her arm. "Off you go, pidge. I'll see you after detention."

Dawn groaned at the reminder of her after-school activities. The next couple weeks were really going to suck.

* * *

><p><em>Two weeks later. Thanksgiving Day<em>

Buffy lay in bed, still caught in a fuzzy half-sleep after hitting snooze on her alarm. It was altogether too early to be waking up, especially on her day off. She'd promised Dawn a real Thanksgiving dinner, though, _just like mom used to make_. For a minute, she allowed herself to wish that things were different. If Joyce were still alive, she'd be getting up around now to get the turkey in the oven and start the final preparations for a big family celebration. Buffy snuggled deeper into her covers and drifted off to the warm fantasy of her mother's capable hands turning dough into pie crusts.

The alarm sounded again, and Buffy roused herself. The pies weren't going to make themselves, and wishing for her life to be normal again was nothing but a waste of time. She pulled on an old t-shirt and a pair of lounge pants, then stumbled down the stairs and yawned her way into the kitchen. She carefully read the small print on the plastic shrink wrap around the turkey before cutting it off. She set the oven to 350 degrees, rinsed the turkey and … gross. Buffy stared with dismay at the lumpy, bloody package of bits that fell out of the bird into the sink. Was she supposed to do something with that? She fleetingly thought of Joyce, who would know exactly what that stuff was, then shrugged and wrestled the turkey into the roasting pan before moving on to the next item on her cooking agenda.

For the next several hours, Buffy measured and chopped, sliced and diced, peeled and pared her way through her Thanksgiving menu. Dawn wandered into the kitchen and sniffed approvingly at the aroma of slow-roasting turkey filling the air. She happily stationed herself at the sink and started peeling potatoes as Buffy finished mixing up the pumpkin pie filling. With the pies in the oven, Buffy turned her attention to quartering potatoes. She stood next to Dawn as they worked, and for just a moment she was able to pretend they were merely acting as their mother's helpers. Like any other holiday, any other year. Then Dawn asked for another task, and the illusion was shattered.

"I don't know right now, Dawn," Buffy said. "Let me get the potatoes going and clean up a little bit, then we'll see what else needs to be done."

Dawn nodded and flipped the switch for the garbage disposal. She rinsed the potato peels and other detritus from the morning's work down the drain. There was a sudden grinding noise followed by a metallic squeal, and then thick, greyish water began rising in the sink.

"Ew, ew!" Dawn shrieked a little and reached for the switch. She flipped the disposal off, and the noise ceased. The water didn't go down, however, and Buffy quickly reached around her sister to turn off the faucet.

"That's not good," Buffy muttered. She ducked down and rummaged beneath the sink until she found the reset button on the garbage disposal. She turned the water back on and tried the device again, with no better results. If anything, the water level in the sink rose even more.

"Buffy, what are we going to do about that?" Dawn eyed the sludge-filled sink, her nose wrinkled in distaste at the potato and carrot peelings floating in the water.

Buffy thanked her lucky stars she had a landlord to deal with problems like this. She'd have to call Mr. Giles and just hope she wasn't disturbing him on the holiday. Except he was British; did they even celebrate Thanksgiving? She didn't think they did.

The phone rang four times before a woman answered. "Rupert's phone," she said.

"Um, hi. I—This is Buffy Summers. I rent a house from Mr. Giles, and—"

The woman giggled. "Just a moment, dear. I'll get _Mister _Giles for you." There was a rustle of cloth in the background and a brief, muffled conversation.

"Miss Summers." Mr. Giles' smooth, accented voice came over the line. "What may I do for you?"

Buffy bit her tongue on the litany of things she would like someone to do for her. None of them were anything like the responsibility of a landlord. Unfortunately. "Our garbage disposal is, well, it's not disposing. More like regurgitating. And I'm making Thanksgiving dinner, and my company is going to be here soon, and—"

"I do apologize, I'm unavoidably tied up right now. And I doubt you'll find a plumber on the holiday." He paused for a moment. "Ah, my nephew, William, might be available if that's acceptable."

"Oh, I don't want to bother anyone on the holiday." _But please send someone over here to fix this_, she tried to silently communicate.

"Not a bother. The only reason I'm out of town is because you Yanks insist on having a four-day weekend to eat turkey and watch American football. Who am I to argue with that?" A _clink_, like ice rattling in a glass, accompanied his words. Buffy wondered if her landlord was drinking. At ten in the morning. She rapidly readjusted her assessment of him as stuffy and dull.

"Well, if you're sure it won't be any trouble," she said.

"I'll ring William and send him 'round as soon as possible."

Buffy let out a relieved sigh as she said thank you and ended the call. She turned to Dawn and smiled. "Crisis averted. I hope." She glanced down at her outfit and considered changing, then discarded the notion. Mr. Giles' nephew would just have to deal with her as she was; she still had work to do. "Okay, Dawnie, do you want to whip the cream for pies, or—"

"Ooh, I'll do the whipped cream." Dawn dragged a bowl out of the cupboard and clunked it down on the counter. She had just submerged the hand mixer into the whipping cream when the doorbell rang. The sisters looked at each other.

"That was quick." Buffy went to answer the door. She opened it to reveal her neighbor. The one she'd been studiously avoiding. "Spike," she said, taken aback by his unannounced presence. "What's up?"

Spike regarded her solemnly and hefted the tool box he held in his right hand. "Rupert called, said you had some plumbing problem."

"_You're _William?" Buffy grinned as a flush spread across Spike's face. Then she realized he looked more angry than embarrassed and quelled her desire to tease him. But seriously: William _Williams_? No wonder he'd changed his name. "Um, yeah, our kitchen sink is—"

He brushed by her into the house and headed for the kitchen without another word. "Nice to see you, too," she said to herself as she closed the door. She heard Dawn's excited greeting on seeing Spike, and his pleasant response. Obviously, his grumpy mood only extended to Buffy; she supposed that was what she got for laughing about his name.

_And for not bothering to talk to him for the past two weeks_, she reminded herself. If one of her friends had given her the silent treatment for no apparent reason, she'd probably be miffed, too. Yet he'd shown up at her house—promptly, no questions asked—when he knew she needed help. Buffy sighed and headed for the kitchen, determined to fix the mess she'd made.

* * *

><p>Spike wiggled on the kitchen floor, trying to find a spot where the edge of the cabinet wasn't digging into his back. Wasn't happening. "Hand me that wrench," he said. Dawn complied eagerly, and he twisted the final nut into place and crawled out from beneath the sink. "Okay, try it now."<p>

Dawn flipped the switch for the garbage disposal. It roared to life, and the brackish standing water swirled down the drain. "You fixed it!" she said with a smile.

Spike nodded and handed the wrench back to his assistant. He glanced up at Buffy as he helped Dawn put his tools away. She hadn't said more than two words to him since he'd started working. Not that he'd expected anything else from her. She'd shut him out completely after they'd kissed. That hadn't been much of a surprise, given her skittish attitude the next morning. The one thing that had kept him from barging in on her privacy was knowing what she was going through with Dawn. It still hurt, though, even as he told himself she had more than enough to deal with in her life without a lovesick idiot following her around like a puppy.

He slammed the tool box lid down and stood up. "There you have it, ladies. The kitchen is all yours again."

"Are you leaving already?" Dawn blinked up at him. "We haven't seen you in forever."

Spike flicked his eyes to Buffy and back to Dawn. "You've had other stuff going on, pigeon. Detention and whatnot, yeah?"

"I guess." She sounded doubtful. Then her face brightened. "Oh, you should stay for dinner! Right, Buffy? Willow and Tara and Xander and Anya are going to be here, too, do you remember them? None of them really have families, either—or at least, not ones they want to hang out with—so we're going to have an Orphan's Thanksgiving. Tara and I came up with that, even though none of us are actually orphans. And your family isn't around, so you're kind of an orphan, too. So have dinner with us?"

He couldn't help but grin at Dawn's flood of words. He'd missed her, missed having the energy she brought into his life. His house had been too quiet and empty; he'd gotten accustomed much too quickly to having Buffy and Dawn around. His smile faded, and he shook his head in response to Dawn's last question. "Don't want to intrude," he said. "It's not really my holiday, anyway."

"But, turkey!" Dawn protested. "And there's pie! You don't have to be an American to like pie and turkey."

"Dawn, I said—"

"Please, Spike." Buffy's quiet voice interrupted him. "We'd love to have you join us." She looked up at him, met his eyes for the first time since answering the door, and a slow, shy smile spread across her face.

Spike found himself nodding in agreement before he'd made the conscious decision to accept her invitation. It wasn't fair, the way she could melt him with a word or a look. He really didn't stand a chance when it came to Buffy Summers.

Dawn engulfed him in a hug, and he amended his earlier thought. Both these girls had him wrapped around their little fingers. Spike smiled, and for the first time in weeks, he felt at home.

* * *

><p>Buffy spared a second for one last glance in the mirror. She gave her reflection a wavery smile; she barely recognized the girl in the mirror. When was the last time she'd bothered with make-up or curled her hair? Didn't really pay when she spent most of her time wearing an ugly hat and sweating over the fryers at the Doublemeat. Not for the first time, Buffy vowed she was going to find a different job. <em>As soon as the holidays are over<em>, she promised herself.

She fluffed her fingers through her curls, letting them fall haphazardly around her shoulders, and opened her bedroom door. The aroma of turkey wafted up the stairs along with the rumble of Spike's voice and Dawn's answering lilt. She sounded happy, and Buffy felt a surge of warmth for Spike's ability to bring a smile to Dawn's face. She had been worried that today would be too full of memories for either of them to enjoy the holiday the way they wanted to. The way they always had.

Thanksgiving had always been a riotous occasion at the Summers household. Any friend who didn't have anywhere else to go was invited to their house. Buffy's friends had been regular attendees ever since they'd met in high school. Joyce always managed to find some lonely, starving artist—or, one memorable year, a troupe of performance artists—and wrangle them into a spot at the table. Buffy had hesitated to even suggest a big meal this year, because celebrating Joyce's favorite holiday without her seemed too much like admitting she was really gone.

But Dawn had insisted that she wanted to do Thanksgiving the way they always had. So they'd invited their friends and put together a menu comprised of Joyce's tried and true favorites. They had talked a lot about their mother as they made their plans, and more than once, Dawn had dissolved into tears. Buffy wasn't sure how to help her sister, not when she had to fight off tears herself. So she'd had misgivings about today; would it just be a reminder of how much they'd lost?

When the doorbell rang, Buffy shook herself from her thoughts. "I've got it," she called, and made her way downstairs. She plastered on a wide smile, determined to at least appear happy for Dawn's sake.

"Happy Thanksgiving!" Willow and Tara greeted her; behind them, Xander and Anya were just pulling up to the curb. Buffy ushered the women in and waited for the others to join them.

"Let me take your coats," she said, once everyone was inside. The small living room was abuzz with their voices. Buffy's smile became less forced the longer she listened to their animated chatter. It was good to have her friends around, and she felt some of her tension about the day dissipate.

Spike and Dawn wandered into living room. Well, Dawn barreled in and dispensed hugs while Spike hovered in the doorway. He leaned one shoulder against the door frame and watched the flurry of greetings with a small, sad smile on his face.

"You guys remember Spike, right?" Buffy re-introduced Spike to her friends. She remembered the circumstances of their first and only meeting. She snuck a glance at Spike and couldn't help thinking of how she had so wildly misjudged him. Neither of them had been at their best that first day. He looked up at her as she watched him make polite, manly conversation with Xander—who had always been a vociferous campaigner for adding more guys to their little gang. Her eyes met Spike's, and she felt an almost physical connection to him at that moment.

"I didn't know you and Spike were so friendly." Willow's quiet words startled Buffy; she'd been off in her own world and hadn't noticed her friend's approach.

"Oh, he, uh, we had a little plumbing issue this morning, which he fixed. So we asked him to stay for dinner." Buffy quailed at the questions in Willow's eyes and took the coward's way out. "Dawn gets along with him really well. Um, I'm going to go put these away," she said, indicating the armful of coats she still held, and escaped up the stairs before she had to explain why Dawn's friendship with their neighbor translated into Buffy making googly eyes at him. She dropped the coats on the bed and took a moment to gather her thoughts before returning to the kitchen to complete the final preparations for dinner.

Buffy announced that the meal was ready, and there was a brief scramble as everyone milled about the table. Dawn orchestrated the seating arrangements, and soon they were sitting down, a little crowded in the smallish dining area. But no one seemed to mind the occasional bumped elbow as they filled their plates. Buffy watched her guests nervously as they took their first bites. She felt like everything had gone well—apart from the minor almost-disaster of the morning—but was still relieved to see the _yummy_ expressions that surrounded her.

"This is delicious, pet," Spike said. She sat at the head of the table, and Dawn had coerced Spike into taking the spot to Buffy's left. He tilted his head and smiled softly at her. "Think you've been fooling me about you needing cooking lessons."

Buffy ignored Willow's sudden look of pointed interest; that girl's eyebrows alone could say a thousand words. She shook her head, negating Spike's statement. "I can do simple stuff. Mashed potatoes and stuffing mix? Not really haute cuisine."

"S'okay." Spike leaned closer to her and spoke low so curious ears at the table couldn't hear him. "I don't mind doing the teaching."

Buffy couldn't ignore the quiver in her stomach his words triggered. She knew her cheeks were flushed, and she was sure everyone's eyes were on her. This was exactly why she'd been staying away from Spike. She wanted to ... She forced those thoughts out of her head. They were so far from PG-13 it wasn't even funny. Definitely not appropriate for a family dinner.

"How's school?" She directed her attention to Tara, who was seated to her right.

Tara had just popped a forkful of turkey into her mouth, so it was Willow who spoke up instead. "It's great! We've both been looking at options for grad school. There's a fantastic program at Berkley that Tara's interested in, and I like their physics department, so that's a possibility."

"B-but there's also MIT," Tara added. "That would be a great opportunity for you, sweetie. I can do my grad work almost anywhere."

"MIT?" Dawn said. "What's that? Where's that?"

Spike answered her question, and the conversation quickly rolled on. Buffy, though, was still stuck on the 'Massachusetts' portion of his response. She'd had no idea Willow and Tara were entertaining the idea of moving across the country. It was her own fault, she supposed. She was the one who'd stopped returning phone calls or making any effort to get together with her friends. It had been easy to bow out of long-standing social events, like Thursday nights at the Bronze, though it occurred to Buffy that her friends had easily accepted her flimsy excuses, as well.

She swirled her fork through her mashed potatoes and gravy, her good mood and her appetite taking a serious hit. It wasn't just the thought of two of her closest friends being thousands of miles away. She should be graduating from college in the spring, too; if her life hadn't been derailed, she might be making plans for grad school herself.

Buffy snickered. Okay, probably not grad school. Getting through undergrad studies had been work enough; school never had been her strong point. But the fact remained that while her friends were moving on with their lives, doing the things that any young adult might reasonably expect to do, she was stuck. Only twenty-two—well, nearly—and already in a dead-end job and saddled with a kid—

Buffy quelled that thought. She loved Dawn and wanted her around. It just ... wasn't fair. And there was nothing she could do about it. When she noticed Spike staring at her with a concerned look in his deep blue eyes, she forced a smile onto her face and her attention back to the conversation.

"—the summer in Europe. Well, a month, at least," Willow was saying. "We'd like to hit the highlights, you know? London, Paris, Rome, oh my."

"That sounds wonderful," Buffy said. The words sounded wooden to her ears, but no one seemed to notice her insincerity. "You guys will have a great time."

Xander cleared his throat and sent a meaningful glance at Anya. "Since we're talking about plans for next year," he began, "there's something we'd like to announce." He took his girlfriend's hand in his and smiled warmly at her. She grinned back, then turned to their waiting audience.

"We're getting married!"

The table erupted at the news; hugs and felicitations were dispensed, and Dawn peppered them with questions about their plans. Buffy could tell she was angling for an invitation to be a bridesmaid. She added her own congratulations, grateful for the level of excitement Willow and Tara were displaying, so her own rather hollow response went unremarked upon. She felt Spike's eyes on her again and raised her wine glass with a cheerful grin that didn't quite match up with her emotions.

"To Xander and Anya," she said, and everyone clinked their glasses together in a toast to the happy couple.


	15. Chapter 15

Spike leaned over the pool table, his eyes fixed on Buffy. She was alone—a bubble of stillness and solitude, even surrounded by her friends. That desperately cheerful smile on her face might convince the casual observer that she didn't have a care in the world. Her friends should have recognized her detachment. Instead they chattered around her and never seemed to notice she wasn't engaged with them.

He shook his head and gave his attention back to his game. "Nine at the side," he called, and neatly sunk his shot, as well as the next two. Dawn rolled her eyes and muttered something under her breath, and Spike remembered he was meant to be teaching the girl how to play pool. He deliberately scratched on his next go.

"Gee, thanks," Dawn said, and bent down to retrieve the cue ball. She placed it carefully on the table and took aim at the two.

"Hang on, pidge." Spike moved to her side and pointed her cue at the four instead. "Try that. Real gentle on the cue ball, but remember to follow through." He watched as she lined up her shot, and then grinned when she excitedly squealed at sinking the ball.

"Did you see that?" Dawn was all smiles as she re-chalked the cue and circled the table, eyeing up her possibilities.

"Sure did." Spike leaned against the drink rail and fiddled with a cigarette. Stupid anti-smoking laws. He glanced up and just caught the quick movement of Buffy's head as she pulled her eyes away from him. He was reminded for a moment of the last time he'd been playing pool at the Bronze while she watched him. He'd been mindlessly flirting with that Harmony bird, but been cognizant of her gaze on him. And then, out in the alley ... Was that where it had started, this obsession with Buffy?

_ He stepped outside into the warm night, as relieved to be away from the vapid blonde who'd attached herself to him as he was to be getting a nicotine fix. A crowd of teenagers spilled out of the Bronze's front door and wandered down the street in a jumble of excited voices; Spike moved away from their bustle, into the dark maw of the alley that backed the club. He smoked silently, unhurriedly._

_The heavy metal door clanged behind him, and he turned to see who was in the alley with him. The figure was at first shrouded in shadow, but then she stepped under a light and leaned wearily against the brick wall. Buffy. She pressed her fingers against her eyes and sniffled once or twice. Spike watched her for a moment before feeling as if he were intruding on something private. He knew enough of his neighbor to feel sure she wouldn't welcome his presence right now. He pitched his cigarette butt away and slipped out of the alley and back into the Bronze through the main entrance._

_He found himself searching the club for her later, his attention continually drawn back to her. After several minutes she came back in, all traces of whatever had been bothering her missing from her smiling face. It was only after her little friends left that she gave up the pretense of a good mood. Spike watched her as she drank her way through the rest of the night. He wasn't sure what it was that compelled him to step in when he saw her reach for her keys; he simply knew he couldn't let that girl find her own way home. He pushed Harmony's clinging hands away and made his way to Buffy's side._

She was doing it again, had been all day. Putting on a show for her friends, tamping down whatever demons she was struggling with so the people she loved wouldn't worry. Her eyes settled on him as he watched her, and he sent her a smile. Her lips curved up slowly, a small, secret smile that felt just for him. Spike's stupid heart stuttered for about the tenth time since she'd tendered an invitation for him to spend the day with her and Dawn—to be part of her family.

"Uh, Earth to Spike?" He tore his eyes away from Buffy's. Dawn held out the cue ball. "I scratched."

"Try it again, then," he said. He threw a glance over the table and set the ball down in a likely spot. "Here, you can make the six, easy as pie." Dawn scooted around the table, and he dropped a hand on hers to help her aim. When he stepped back to let her take the shot, his eyes gravitated to Buffy. She was watching him again, and Spike felt a rush of satisfaction that, for all she'd skittered away every time he'd tried to start a conversation with her, she couldn't take her eyes off him. He held her gaze for a moment, until Dawn's defeated groan distracted him.

"I'm never gonna get this," she complained.

"Sure you will. Just takes practice." Spike pushed Buffy to the back of his mind and focused his attention on the other girl in his life. "C'mere," he beckoned. "Don't even worry about stripes or solids, right? Take some shots and get the feel for it."

He coached her through clearing the table—with a little help—and then let her rack the balls for 'a real game.'

Spike broke and with a loud _clack_ , the neat triangle of balls careened around the table. The two and the thirteen disappeared into pockets. He leaned over the table again and very carefully missed sinking the eleven. He'd left a nice, easy shot for Dawn, hopefully without making it too obvious that's what he was doing. "How're things at home?" he asked idly, as he stepped out of her way.

Dawn shrugged. "Fine, I guess." She looked up at him, a question on her face, and Spike pointed to the seven hovering near the corner pocket.

"You're managing to stay out of trouble, I hope. School's being attended and all that?"

She gave him a sharp look from the corner of her eye as she took aim at the ball he'd indicated, but ignored his question until after she'd taken her turn. She sighed as the seven caromed away from the pocket. "Stupid game," she muttered. Then: "Yes, I've been going to school. And doing my homework, thanks to Willow and Tara. Buffy doesn't let me have any unsupervised time anymore, so ..."  
>He squeezed her shoulder as he walked past her. "That's what you get when you screw up. Lots of adults telling you what to do."<p>

Dawn shrugged again and leaned one hip against the table. "Yeah, whatever. I mean, I like hanging out with them, but ..." She gnawed on her lip before continuing. "Buffy's too busy with her stupid job to spend any time with me. I know she has to work so we have, like, food and stuff. I just wish—"

Whatever teenage desire she'd been about to divulge was destined to remain a mystery, as a floppy-haired, baggy-jeaned boy walked up to her. "Hi, Dawn," he said, and she turned bright red under the boy's attention.

"Uh, h-hi, Jason. Happy Thanksgiving."

"Are you busy? Do you want to dance with me?"

Dawn shot a look at Spike, who merely raised one eyebrow. "Well, um, I was playing pool, but ... You don't mind, do you, Spike?"

He held out his hand for her cue. "'Course not, pigeon. Off you go, now."

"Thanks!" Dawn gave him a quick hug. "Buffy's up in the balcony," she whispered in his ear before scampering off with the boy. Spike watched her go, bemused at her parting words. Leave it to the fourteen-year-old to either notice his interest in her sister or simply try her hand at matchmaking. Regardless, his eyes were drawn to the balcony, where Buffy stood at the railing, a drink in her hand. She stared out over the dance floor, that same distant look she'd sported at dinner firmly in residence on her face.

Spike placed his and Dawn's cues back in the wall rack, stopped at the bar, and then made his way up to the balcony. He lingered for a moment at the top of the stairs, taking in Buffy's figure against the strobing lights that illuminated the stage. She was dressed almost primly, with her buttoned-up-to-the-chin, long-sleeved blouse and a knee-length skirt. Her hair hung in soft curls around her shoulders, and Spike thought that he liked it best when it was down, all golden and shiny. He thought about pushing it aside and leaning in to kiss her just behind the ear. She'd smell of her shampoo, the light perfume she wore, her sweat. Then he tamped down his baser urges and noticed that her shoulders were drawn tight; tension radiated from every fiber of her body. The artifice was gone. With no one watching her, no audience to perform for, even a complete stranger would be able to tell she wasn't happy.

Buffy's attention was still fixed on the crowd of people before her, and she gave no indication of noticing him till he sidled up to the railing next to her. "Hullo, pet," he said. "Having a good time?"

He expected a quick, positive response from her; he was taken by surprise when she shook her head. "This used to be one of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions." She didn't look at him as she spoke. "After the family stuff, we always come here. It's this unspoken thing: all survivors of Sunnydale High will get extremely drunk together on turkey day. It's our chance to catch up and, you know, show off to each other. But I really don't want to play the 'so what have _you_ been up to this year?' game anymore. It's kind of depressing to not have any news to share other than 'Oh, I dropped out of school and started working at the Doublemeat.' Do you have any idea how humiliating that is?"

"Think I can imagine," Spike said. "You had good reasons for what you did, though, yeah? I'm sure your friends understand that. You've got nothing to be ashamed of, Buffy."

"Nothing to be proud of, either." She tipped her head back and drained the rest of her drink.

"So it's a pity party, then, is it?" He handed her the drink he'd bought her; he'd taken a chance and ordered a fruity cocktail along with his beer.

Buffy took the drink with a glare in his direction. "You think I don't have a reason to feel sorry for myself?"

He tipped up his beer for a long swallow. "Didn't say that, love. Just ... not what I'd expect from you."

"What's that mean?"

Spike turned to face her full on, waiting until he had her attention before speaking. "You're the strongest person I've ever met, Buffy. Everything you've done since you lost your mum—moving out of your house, putting your dreams and plans on hold to raise your sister— Not many people I know would do what you've done. And from what I've seen, you do it without fanfare. Without asking anyone to notice how much you're giving up. So, yeah, maybe you've got a reason or six to justify a little self-pity. But it doesn't seem like your style."

Buffy stared at him for a long, breathless moment before turning away. Spike followed her gaze to where her friends danced together: two happy couples amongst the crush of people on the dance floor.

"It's not fair," she said, her voice so low he could barely hear her. "Everyone's all ... paired up and making plans and moving on with their lives. What am _I _doing? Look," she gestured at the writhing crowd, "even _Dawn_ has someone to be with." She leaned over slightly and rested her wrists on the wooden railing, the drink nestled between her small hands. "What do I have? There's no one I even _think_ I want to feel like that about, the way Xander and Anya ... They're getting married, Willow and Tara are going to move away for school, and I'll just be here. Stuck."

Spike swallowed hard and tamped down on his impulse to declare himself, to tell her all the feelings that swelled up inside him whenever he was around her. He stood silent next to her, the two of them alone together in the crowded club. The rhythms of the band swirled around them until Buffy suddenly turned to him.

"Dance with me?" There was no joy in her face as she turned to him; the invitation sounded stilted and awkward. But when she held out her hand, he took it without hesitation and led her down the stairs. They deposited their drinks—both mostly empty now—on the bar on their way to the dance floor. Spike pulled her into his arms and thanked whatever powers-that-be as Buffy molded her body against his.

* * *

><p>Buffy wasn't sure what had possessed her to ask Spike to dance. Maybe it was being fed up with being the fifth wheel after spending the evening watching Xander and Anya make googly eyes at each other while Tara and Willow cuddled together. Or maybe it was the sting of Cordelia Chase's pseudo-sympathy when she'd gotten caught up to the non-events in Buffy's life over the past year.<p>

Well, that wasn't fair. It wasn't Cordy's fault that everything out of her mouth sounded sarcastic.

Whatever had prompted her words, Buffy was glad he'd accepted her invitation. Spike held her close, and she let her eyes slip shut. Just for a few minutes, she wanted to pretend that her life had never gotten derailed. She ought to be a senior this year. Maybe she'd have been renting a house with Willow and Tara, rather than spending another year in the dorm.

She had the renting a house thing down, at least.

Buffy pushed the bitter thought away and tightened her hold on Spike's hand. He slipped an arm around her; his hand settled at the small of her back and traced random patterns there. Her skin felt almost too warm beneath his touch. She allowed herself to lean on him and for a moment let herself wish she had what she'd been envying all night.

It wasn't that she wanted a boyfriend—and she certainly wasn't thinking of Spike as potential boyfriend material, because can you say awkward? Buffy was pretty sure dating your neighbor was right up there with ... a really, really wrong thing. But he smelled incredible—leather and smoke and just the smell of _him_ rising off his skin—and they fit together perfectly. And … She wondered if he really meant the things he'd said to her. He thought she was strong? That she was doing something … worthwhile. Buffy hadn't thought of it in those terms before. She just … did what had to be done. And most of the time she didn't think she was doing any of it very well. Maybe, though. It wasn't like Spike was her biggest fan; she knew she'd made an amazingly terrible first impression.

And second impression. And third … Buffy let out a sharp, quick laugh and relaxed against Spike as they swayed to the music. They circumscribed a tight circle in their corner of the dance floor, until she remembered the last time she'd been in his arms. When she'd kissed him.

She took a deep breath and pulled back a little. She looked up to see Spike looking down at her, an unreadable expression in his blue eyes. The silence between them suddenly became uncomfortable.

"So, William _Williams_?" she said. "Were your parents hoping you'd grow up to be a poet or what?"

Spike grinned stiffly and shook his head. "My birth name was William Henry Pratt." A muscle twitched in his jaw as he continued, "The Third."

She blinked. "Oh. Well. That sounds ... aristocratic."

"Maybe a bit less so than you'd imagine."

"Meaning?"

His eyes went hard for a second. Buffy found herself regretting the offhand question. She opened her mouth to tell him to forget it or maybe to change the subject, when he spoke.

"Meaning my father was a berk who thought he was something because he'd had a run of luck in the stock exchange. He'd have done well enough to have left off with the airs and skipped the establishing a dynasty gig." He sighed, and the anger faded from his expression. "And that's enough about my family. Now, you, pet—"

"What about me?"

Spike smiled down at her as he spun her around in time to the music. "Yeah. What are you gonna do?"

"Do? I don't—"

He pulled her in close to him and snugged their clasped hands up to his chest. "You don't want to work at that grease factory forever."

Buffy dropped her gaze to their entwined hands. Spike's forefinger, clad in a plain silver band and chipped black nail polish, stroked along her thumb. She felt as if her entire being were focused on that one tiny point of contact. Silly when she was pressed against him from chest to knee, but that light touch did more to rattle her nerves than the warmth of him up and down her body.

"Buffy?" He let go of her hand and tipped her chin up. Whatever he saw on her face made him frown. "I apologize. I didn't mean to, um, interfere."

"No, I mean, you're right. But it's what I have to do right now."

"Why?"

"You're kidding, right?" She shook her head and laughed bitterly. The hurt that clanged through her took her by surprise; why had she been so sure Spike would understand? "You've met my sister, the human garbage disposal. What part of this equation don't you get?"

He blinked at her sharp words. "You don't belong there, Buffy. You're something—You're better than that."

She shrugged, made uncomfortable under his scrutiny and his good opinion of her. "I don't see a lot of options," she said finally. "I don't know what else to do."

"Don't have to figure it out on your own, do you? Your friends are there for you. Seems they've really stepped up since …" He fell silent, and just like that the awkward was back in their conversation.

Buffy struggled for something to say that wouldn't sound stupid or dismissive. She knew she'd been childish about the whole thing. It was just a kiss, right? Only, as she snuck a look up at him, it didn't seem like such a simple thing. "I'm sorry," she blurted out.

"Sorry? For what?"

"I've been avoiding you, and you've been so … so helpful and _good_ to me. And I just … I shouldn't have done that." Then, before she could stop herself: "I missed you."

"Did you, now?" The self-satisfied smirk on Spike's face made Buffy want to recall her impetuous words. Then the sharp angles of his face and the sharp look in his eyes melted into something softer, warmer. He stroked her cheek with his fingers before slipping his hand through her hair to curl at the nape of her neck. "I missed you, too, kitten."

Buffy stared at Spike. Mutual missage. What did that mean? Just that they were ... friends. Who missed each other. Only what she was feeling right now was so far from friendship. Even with her ex-boyfriends, she'd never felt this irresistible pull to another person.

His thumb stroked along her neck just behind her ear. She shivered pleasantly at the caress. The song ended, and Buffy was distantly aware that they were no longer swaying to the music. Spike's arm tightened around her waist, and he leaned in toward her and spoke her name.

"Buffy!"

And that was a different voice altogether. She turned her head slowly, caught in Spike's gaze like a fly in sap. Dawn's grinning face made her move hastily two feet to the right. "Dawn. Hi. We're dancing." _Stupid brain_. Her sister's grin only widened.

"Okay, whatever, weirdo. Is it all right if I go home with Willow and Tara? Please, please, please?"

Buffy scrambled to switch gears and focus on Dawn. She couldn't shake her awareness of Spike; he glowed like neon next to her. "Uh, where's Willow? I'd like to talk to her before—"

"She's getting her coat. She said it's fine. Can I go?" Dawn bounced on her toes, nearly burbling over. She made her eyes go wide and put a pout on her face. She'd obviously forgotten who'd patented that look.

Buffy scanned the crowd looking for Willow. She was just getting seriously annoyed at the tall boy with the exceedingly puffy hair who kept getting in her line of vision when her friend's voice sounded in her ear.

"Hey, sweetie, we're taking off. Am I taking Dawnie with me?"

"Are you sure it's okay?" Buffy twisted her fingers together and tried not to feel guilty about her overwhelming desire to _not_ be responsible for her sister tonight.

Willow laughed and wrapped an arm around Dawn's shoulders. "It's no bother. We love this kid."

Buffy nodded. "Thanks, Willow." She reached for her sister and pulled her into a hug. "Happy Thanksgiving, Dawn," she whispered in the younger girl's ear. Then she forced out the words she wished came more naturally to her: "I love you."

Dawn squeezed her tight before stepping back. In that moment, the absence of their mother was a physical pain that shook Buffy to the core. She doubted, from the smile on Dawn's face, that her sister felt the same keen loss as she herself did. She had to wonder at the timing; surely when she was trying to remember the exact proportion of spices for the apple pie would have been a better instant to need her mother. But it was there nonetheless, a sucking chest wound that she'd somehow forgotten.

Spike's hand pressed warm at the small of her back, and Buffy pushed the pain away. She caught Dawn's uncertain expression and smiled warmly. "What time should I pick you up tomorrow?" she said.

"Oh, um, I can … can I just call when I'm ready?"

Buffy nodded again. "That's perfect, Dawn. Have fun, okay?" They said their goodbyes, and then she was alone with Spike. She turned to him. "How about another dance?" She forced a bright smile onto her face, though of everyone she knew, he seemed the least likely to be fooled by her act.

"My pleasure." Spike fixed his eyes on hers as he pulled her back into his arms. She went willingly, and they moved slowly to the music. Buffy tucked her head beneath his chin; she could hear the steady _lub-dub_ of his heart under her ear. It was easier to be away from his piercing gaze. She felt herself relax again as the immediacy of her sudden longing for her mother began to fade.

The band tore into a new tune with a more upbeat tempo. Spike surprised her by turning her around so her back was to his chest. His hands on her hips urged her to move in time to the music. Buffy felt her cheeks grow warm at the intimate contact, but then she tamped down on her embarrassment and lost herself in the physicality of the dance.

She let her head fall back as they danced, their bodies close enough that she could feel Spike's ... could feel HIM pressing into her buttocks. She gave in to the sudden need to press her hips against him. He took a deep breath, and his left hand slid around her abdomen to hold her firmly in place. His other hand reached up, pulled her loose curls back from her left shoulder. He leaned forward, rested his chin in the curve of her shoulder as his fingers dragged slowly through her hair and continued down her arm.

"Buffy," he said. The movement of his lips near her ear sent a chill skating along her nerves. She thought of kissing him: the taste of him, his mouth beneath hers, thought of how his arms had felt clutched in her hands, his skin warm over clenched muscles. His free hand curled up her side, stopping only when his thumb brushed against the swell of her breast. He spoke again—"Buffy"—and just the way he pronounced her name made her know that she could have anything she wanted from him tonight.

That thought spiraled around her brain, gaining import as she moved in unison with him. His mouth trailed along her throat; he dragged his teeth against her skin, but so gently and politely that it felt like a kiss. Buffy reached up with both arms and twined them around his neck. Her eyes slipped closed as they danced, and he continued to ply her with soft lips and warm breath. She was sure there was a reason she should put an end to this, but there was nothing in the world she wanted to do less than make Spike stop touching her. The music swirled over her, and she shimmied her hips to the rhythm.

_Just for tonight_, she thought, _I can do anything I want._

* * *

><p>Dawn hopped out of the car with a quick goodbye and scurried up the sidewalk to the house. She could hear the thumping bass of some generic pop song from the street; a clamor of voices rose an octave above the blur of music. She turned the doorknob and cracked the door open. Awash in the spill of party noise, Dawn turned and waved to Willow and Tara. A sigh of relief escaped her when they waved back and drove off. She'd been worried for about half a second when Willow had come up to talk to Buffy. Luckily her sister was too googly-eyed over Spike to pay <em>too<em> much attention. Dawn was half-surprised she hadn't broken up a snogfest when she interrupted them. She saw the way they'd been, like, _looking_ at each other.

She stepped into the house, instantly too warm in her red woolen coat. She stripped it off and scanned the crowded living room she found herself in. A keg held place of honor in one corner, and Dawn moved that way. Navigating a party where she knew next to nobody might be easier with a beer in her stomach. She filled a plastic glass and took a nervous sip before glancing around again. Okay, so she recognized almost everyone in the room, but there was certainly no one she would call a friend—or dare strike up a conversation with. Then a pair of blue eyes beneath a shock of dark hair caught her gaze. A smile curved her lips, and the rest of the party faded away as Jason moved toward her.

She was going to have _so_ much fun tonight.


	16. Chapter 16

It was an off-hand comment, "Get a room" tossed at them in a disdainful manner, that stopped them. Half a second after Spike heard the words, processed the phrase as the truly brilliant idea it truly was, Buffy detached herself from him. She pressed a hand to his chest and cast a furtive glance around from their dark (but completely not private) alcove under the stairs. Perhaps she'd forgotten all her friends had gone already.

"Stop," she said. Her eyes looked everywhere but at him. Her obvious denial burned, and he didn't want to let her pretend there was nothing going on here. It was she who'd turned to him on the dance floor; she who'd pulled him into a searing kiss, wound her arms around his neck and twined her body against his. Spike curled his fingers around her hips and tugged her closer to him.

"Why?" He pressed his forehead against hers. His breath rushed out of him, and she had to feel how much he wanted her. Buffy twisted against him, and their mouths met again. He couldn't get close enough to her, though she was pressed so tightly against him a whisper wouldn't fit between them. He wanted more, wanted her skin bared to his fingers, wanted her mouth and hands on his flesh.

Only she'd said 'stop' so he mustered up everything in him and did just that. He pulled his mouth from hers and put an arm's length between them. "Buffy," he said. Just that, her name like a prayer, and nothing else. He fixed his eyes on hers. In his peripheral vision he saw her lick her lips, then she nodded slightly.

"Not here." Her voice was hushed, but the words were clear. She stepped towards him, closed the distance and wrapped her hands around his biceps. "Take me home," she whispered, and dropped a kiss just below his ear.

* * *

><p>Spike tugged her across the bench seat and out the driver's side door. It may have been quicker to disentangle themselves, but Buffy had no desire to remove her lips from Spike's, or peel her hands out from under his shirt. Judging by the firm grasp he had on her ass, he could relate.<p>

They stumbled clumsily up the few steps to his door. Spike spun them so he could reach the doorknob and banged the back of Buffy's head against the door in doing so. She grunted at the impact.

Spike pulled away from her, and somehow that hurt worse than the slight ache at the back of her skull. "Sorry about that," he said. His lips moved against her cheek with his words.

"I'm fine." She buried her fingers in his hair and pulled him back to her for another searching, searing kiss. He fumbled with the keys for a minute before the door finally opened behind her.

Buffy was the one to break the kiss this time. She backed over the threshold, keeping her eyes fixed on Spike. The blue of his eyes had gone dark; their smoldering heat stirred a reaction deep in her belly. Spike slammed the door shut with such force that the windows in the living room rattled in their panes. He stalked toward her, quickly closing the gap between them. A bolt of desire shot through her. She _needed _his hands on her, his mouth on hers, his lips and tongue moving in concert with her own.

Spike kissed her hard, holding her face in his hands, and walked her backwards into a wall. He fisted his hands in her hair, almost to the point of pain, before releasing her from his grip and his mouth at the same time. He splayed both hands against the wall and leaned his forehead against hers. His breath came in fast gasps against her lips; his body pinned her to the wall. He pressed, hard and needy, against her belly as his chest moved against hers. When she squirmed against him, he inhaled sharply, then shifted his hips against hers.

Buffy moaned and reached up to recapture his incredible mouth. He kissed as if he were dying for her, as if he'd been too long in a desert and she was a spring of clear water. He drank her down; she'd never been kissed like this before. With no conscious effort, her legs came up around his waist, and she climbed him like a vine.

Spike wrapped an arm around her to support her weight; his other hand snaked up her left thigh, under her skirt. His fingers grazed against her pussy. One finger slipped beneath the elastic of her panties and dragged slowly along her labia. She squirmed into his too-light touch, wanting more. Now.

His hand disappeared from her sex, and then he peeled her legs from around him. Buffy firmly disagreed with this plan and tightened her grip in protest. Spike pulled his mouth off of hers. "Wanna see you, pet." His voice, a sinful whisper—like stolen chocolate—rumbled through her, zinged an electric shock straight to her clit.

Her feet hit the floor.

He stepped back and raked his hungry eyes over her. His glance tripped along her nerves; she could honest-to-god _feel _his eyes on her body.

"Touch me," she commanded.

Spike arched his scarred eyebrow at her tone and rolled his tongue behind his smug grin. The silver barbell through his tongue winked at Buffy, and she was suddenly consumed with the need—a deep, physical ache—to know how that would feel on her clit.

"But you're all covered up," Spike said. He trailed a finger along the high collar of her shirt. "You look like a Victorian schoolmarm. All buttoned up and prim."

"A schoolmarm?"

Buffy barely had time to get offended before he leaned in and nibbled gently on her throat. "Mmhmm. It's fucking hot."

"Oh—"

He caught her lips with his, and his hands skimmed over her arms. Though he was barely touching her, it was driving her crazy.

"Spike, you need to—" She met his eyes, and her courage suddenly failed her.

"Oh, I know what I _need_ to do." His hands went to the collar of her shirt and yanked. Buttons flew from their moorings and clattered across the wood floor. "Oops."

His unapologetic smirk begged to be wiped off his face. Buffy launched herself from the wall and sucked his bottom lip into her mouth. Spike worked her shirt down her arms. Her wrists caught in the sleeves, and for a moment she was helpless before him, her hands tangled together at the small of her back. He released her from the fabric before she could fully process the surge of fresh lust that jolted through her.

"Upstairs," she managed between frantic kisses. "Now." She would have said _please_, but Spike was rather insistent she use her tongue for other purposes. She wasn't inclined to argue.

They made slow, stumbling progress across the foyer to the staircase. After half-crawling backwards up three risers, Buffy stopped and tugged at the hem of Spike's t-shirt. "Off." He obliged her and skinned it off in one smooth motion.

_Guh._ She put her hands on his shoulders and slid them down his chest. Her palms curved over his pecs, cupped the small swell of muscle lightly as her fingers pinched his nipples. She leaned forward and sucked his left nipple into her mouth. The ring piercing it danced on her tongue as she teased the hardening bud.

Spike snaked an arm around her and pulled her tight against him. His other hand threaded through her hair and gently pulled her head away from his chest. He panted for breath and just _stared_ at her. "Are you real? You are … fuck, Buffy, I—" He crushed her to him and plundered her mouth with his. Slowly, slowly, he nudged her up and back.

His hands were busy as they crab-crawled up the stairs. He deftly unhooked her bra and pulled it from her arms. He pushed her up another step as his tongue swirled around first one nipple and then the other. His hand unzipped her skirt and maneuvered it down her legs. By the time they'd climbed another two stairs, she was naked save for her black thong and her knee-high boots.

Spike leaned back and looked at her. His hand traced the path his eyes took. His fingers glided across her collarbone, through the valley between her breasts, over the curve of her ribs to dip into her belly button. She shivered under the feathery attentions; a trail of gooseflesh followed his touch. "So pretty, Buffy," he said as he curved forward and pressed a kiss to her stomach. Her abdominal muscles jumped. His hand curved around her hip as he kissed his way to the edge of her thong. He grasped the elastic in his teeth and pulled it away from her skin, then let it snap back into place.

"Up," Buffy said. She twined her fingers through his hair and tugged him to her for another kiss. They made steady progress until Buffy's heel caught on the second-to-last riser, and she landed on her back in the upstairs hallway. The floor was cold against her overheated skin. Spike was on her before she could get up, hovering above her and sucking on her nipples while his other hand dipped inside her panties to stroke against her slippery skin.

He pinched her clit between his thumb and forefinger and tugged gently. "Ooohh." Buffy writhed against his fingers; she panted and twisted on the floor. "Oh, my god. Please," she said. "Please, please." She had never heard herself sound like this before: breathy and desperate. She wasn't even sure what she was asking for, what she wanted him to do. She just wanted more. More of his hands on her, more of his skin against hers, more of his mouth and tongue and clever fingers.

He slid his thumb inside of her in response to her pleas, and the heel of his hand pressed against her clit. She strained into the pressure and nearly sobbed when his hand slipped away from her. Spike released her breast with a wet _plop_ and looked down at her. He licked his lips and bent down to tease a kiss across her mouth. He pulled away when she sought to deepen the kiss.

"Spike. Please."

"Mmm, love hearing you say my name," he said. He flicked his tongue across the strand of silver hoop earrings that scaled down the shell of her ear. Her toes curled. "Love hearing you beg." Spike met her affronted glare with a smirk. "What do you want me to do, now you're asking so nice?"

Buffy caught her breath. What she wanted. Spike twirled his tongue behind his teeth again, and the flashing silver jewelry caught her eye. She watched, mesmerized, as he pushed the barbell along the cage of his teeth, expertly rolling it around in his mouth. "I want you to—" She bit her tongue and felt herself blush as she nearly dared to name her desire.

Spike didn't miss her embarrassment, of course. Not with the way her body was glowing like a giant flashing neon sign. "Ooh, you went all pink, kitten." He lowered his head to dip his tongue into her belly button and drag it up her abdomen and between her breasts. He moved up her chest until the ball of his tongue stud traced the notch of bone at the apex of her sternum. She shivered as the jewelry hummed along her skin.

"I know what you want," Spike whispered against her collarbone. He slid his hand down her side, and his fingers snuck beneath her panties to stroke her hip. He worked an arm beneath her, lifting her off the floor so he could slide her silky thong down her legs. When it got caught on the heel of her boot, he tugged roughly until it came free with a _rrrip_. Buffy glared at him; he smiled smugly in return as he slipped her ruined underwear into his back pocket.

"You're awfully hard on my wardrobe, Spike," she said.

He laughed at that. He grabbed her hand and placed it between his legs. The heat of his engorged penis radiated through the fabric of his jeans. "I'm just awfully hard." He grinned as she blushed a deeper red. She didn't move her hand, though.

"That's … mature." But she laughed as she said it, and still her hand didn't move.

It was a strange moment. Laying naked on her neighbor's floor, her hand on his dick, her pussy craving his tongue: it was hot and erotic—and completely unlike her. And possibly the best Thanksgiving she'd ever had. If someone had told her this was what she'd be doing tonight, the last word she'd have associated with it was _fun_. But that's what she realized now: she was having fun with Spike.

Naked fun. There were worse things in the world, though maybe that was just the four cocktails talking.

Then Spike's eyes met hers again, and Buffy nearly gasped at the raw need on his face. He trailed a finger up her right leg, and all thoughts of fun were burned out of her, replaced by the fire his touch ignited along all her nerves. He reached the junction of her thighs and nudged her legs apart with a tap. She let her knees fall out to the side and lay there, splayed and naked, open to his heated stare.

"Look at you." His lips followed the path his finger had just traveled. He pressed a line of hot, open-mouthed kisses on the soft flesh of her thighs. He paused when he reached her sex and gusted a breath over the curls that covered her. "You're so wet for me." He dipped a finger between her labia, dragging it from her entrance up, up to tap against her swollen clit.

"Spike." She panted out two quick breaths. "Want—"

He looked up at her. They both held their breath as Spike's finger circled the nubbin of flesh. "I know, Buffy." He dropped his head to brush a kiss onto her moist flesh. Her hips bucked up.

Buffy gasped when he took his mouth away. He'd been teasing her—light touches and soft kisses designed to excite her without allowing her any satisfaction—and she'd had enough. She took hold of his head in both hands, her nails digging into his scalp. He chuckled against her skin and allowed her to push his head between her thighs.

Spike curled his hands under her hips, cupped her ass in his palms, and tipped her pelvis up to him. Finally—finally!—his tongue slipped into her folds and leisurely licked her from bottom to top. He swirled the tip of his tongue around her clit, then flattened it against her.

"Hoh!" Buffy squirmed beneath him. Spike released his hold on her buttocks in order to throw her legs over his shoulders and press a finger into her pussy. Her arms spasmed out to her sides, and her fingers scrabbled across the floor in search of something to hang on to as he licked and nuzzled and sucked. He pulled her clit into his mouth. She could feel the firm pressure from the barbell when he ran his tongue over her sensitive bundle of nerves. It was subtler than she'd imagined it would be, but the sensation sent a thrill racing through her.

Another finger joined the first one he'd slide inside her, and Buffy's stomach muscles clenched. He pressed harder, and the motion twanged and pulled at something deep inside her; a wave of reverberations swept through her body. She could feel the press of his fingers all the way to her scalp and her fingertips. It was too much, too fast, and she let out a wordless wail, her back arching off the floor. Spike chuckled against her cunt, and the vibrations spread through her. Her inner muscles fluttered, warning of her impending orgasm. She was _so close_. Then his fingers were gone, and Buffy almost screamed in frustration.

"Spike … please," she begged. His hand smoothed over her abdomen and held her down when she rocked her hips up again.

"I got you," Spike said. His breath puffed out over her engorged folds, and his tongue replaced the emptiness left by his fingers. Buffy swiveled her hips up to his mouth, driving him deeper inside her. Her heels dug into his back. She worried fleetingly about hurting him with the sharp heels of her boots, then his tongue moved against a spot inside her that drove all thoughts out of her head. He planted a hand on her breast and rolled the nipple between his fingers. At the same time, his other hand plucked at her clit.

Buffy's climax ripped through her like a storm. Even though she'd known it was coming, the intensity of her orgasm took her by surprise. She gasped out a breath. Every muscle in her body clenched and tightened; her legs vised around Spike's head, and her hands clamped into the hard ridge of muscle on his shoulders. When she came back to herself, she was shaking, trembling like a new leaf in a windstorm. Tears ran down her face.

"Oh, my god," she managed. "That was …"

Spike rested his chin on her pubic bone and smiled lazily at her. His fingers still played at her nipple, and tiny aftershocks skittered across her skin. "That was a bloody revelation." He released her breast and slowly stood up. "And I'm not half done with you, pet."

He reached a hand out to her and lifted her up to stand before him. He quickly unlaced his boots and kicked them off to separate corners of the hall. His hands went to his waistband and unbuttoned his fly. Buffy watched with bated breath as he pushed the jeans over his slim hips and down his legs until he stood naked in front of her. She ran her eyes over him, appreciating the contour of his muscular chest and arms, the definition of his abdomen, the sharp cut of his hips. Then her gaze went lower and ...

* * *

><p>"What is that?"<p>

Spike followed her gaze to his cock. He grasped it in his left hand and gave it three long, slow strokes. Buffy's eyes and mouth opened into wide circles of amazement. Awe, Spike liked to think. He grinned and hitched his head to the side.

"Why, a bossy little thing like you? Don't even tell me you've never seen one of these before." He tugged his cock in her direction.

Buffy kicked one knee out and planted her hands on her hips. And, wow, did that do wonderful things to her tits. She looked like a fucking sex goddess: naked except for those knee-high boots with the wicked heels, nipples at full attention, lips red and swollen, and hair all mussed. He licked a taste of her luscious pussy from his lips.

And she was talking.

Spike released the grip he held on his penis; if he didn't, he'd end up coming just from the sight of her. "What's what, now, love?"

"That. Thing. In. Your." Buffy's bravado vanished, and she gestured vaguely at his pelvic region rather than complete her sentence. Spike smirked and took himself in hand again.

"Oh, this?" He pulled his foreskin back so she could get a good look at the thick stud running top-to-bottom through the head. "I think you're going to like this one, pet."

Buffy reached out a tentative hand and, with one gentle finger, traced around the piercing. He hissed in a breath at her barely-there touch, and she glanced up at him, startled.

"Didn't that hurt?" she asked. "I mean, like, a _lot_?"

Spike chuckled. "It did at that. Felt like I was on fire for three weeks straight." He grasped her wrist and pulled her flush to him. For the first time he felt her completely naked and pressed against his own bare skin. He wanted to do this every day for the rest of his life. _Be_ with Buffy. In every way.

He wondered if she'd ever feel the same about him.

He spread his left hand across the small of her back; his pinky grazed the cleft of her ass, and she trembled against him. His other hand stroked the sweat-dampened strands of hair from her flushed cheeks. Buffy's eyes were still riveted to his cock—now pressed between their bodies. It jumped under her gaze. She flicked a look up at him, then back down to the object of her fascination. She reached out again and wrapped her thumb and forefinger around the shaft, just behind the glans. She rolled her fingers, and her breathing quickened as she watched his foreskin slide back and forth.

"I've never been with anyone who wasn't, um, you know. Circumcised."

How she could blush after he'd just had his tongue so far up her pussy she'd cried was a wonder to Spike. That almost derailed him from asking the question that had immediately occurred to him. "How many?"

Her hand stilled, and he realized, yes, he really _had_ just said that aloud. Buffy stared at him, her expression unreadable.

"Sorry, pet." He looked down at his penis, the head nearly purple with blood and desire, and at Buffy's delicate fingers encircling him. "Bit distracted and all."

She licked her lips, and Spike couldn't pass up the temptation. He kissed her fiercely, wanting to erase the hint of doubt his impetuous words had brought to her eyes. She wound her arms around his neck and leaned into him, deepening the kiss. It was no work at all to lift her lithe frame into his arms and make his way down the hall to his bedroom. He set her down beside the bed and knelt in front of her to unzip her boots. Buffy steadied herself with a hand on his shoulder as he slid the first boot from her foot.

Her fingers traced over his back, and he winced as they brushed across a sore spot just below his shoulder blade. "I hurt you," she said quietly.

Spike slipped the other boot off and looked up at her. "'S'okay." He smiled. "Totally worth it, to watch you come." Another blush swept through her, igniting her skin. He trailed his hands up her legs and over her hips as he stood, then cradled the weight of her breasts in his palms. His thumbs tweaked her nipples, and she let out a little breathy gasp. Christ, he loved the noises she made.

Her eyes were wide and dark. "You're not … not into getting hurt when you're—" Buffy flicked his nipple ring lightly, then wrapped her warm hand around his cock. "Is that what the piercings are about? You like to be hurt?"

He groaned as she tightened her fist around him and moved it slowly up and down. "N-no," he stuttered, and grabbed her wrist, freeing himself. He sat on the bed and pulled her down to sit next to him. "These," he gestured at his piercings, "didn't have anything to do with sex."

Buffy raised an eyebrow and sent a pointed glance toward his nether regions. "Really. But I'll like that one, isn't that what you said?"

Spike smoothed her hair behind her ear and leaned in to nibble at her neck. "Mmm, you will, kitten," he said, and licked a line up her neck. "Didn't get it for that reason, 's'just a bonus, that it's gonna make you feel good."

"Oh." She tipped her head back to give him easier access to her throat. She moaned and whimpered as he took full advantage of her open invitation. His little sex kitten, and he was making her purr. He cupped his hands around her breasts, but then Buffy put her hands on his chest and pushed him away.

"So why'd you do that?"

She was staring at his cock again. Which Spike didn't mind, but he'd rather she stop talking about it and start touching it again. He wondered if she'd suck it if he asked very nicely. Then he processed her words. He needed a moment to allow his blood-deprived brain to formulate an answer so he leaned Buffy back onto the bed and distracted her by licking her breasts until she moaned.

The truth would be too much, a mood killer he was in no mood for. "Can we save the question and answer for later?" He tempered the sharp edge to his question with a long, slow exploration of her left nipple. "Want to be inside you."

Buffy sucked in a heaving breath and pushed herself up onto her elbows. She fixed him with a serious stare. "Can you wear a condom with … that?" She nodded towards him, and her eyes inexorably followed along. Spike suppressed a grin.

"Of course," he said, and stood to fetch a prophylactic. He was sure there was at least one in his bedside table. Buffy's hand closed around his wrist before he got far.

"Do you have to? I mean, I'm … safe. If you are?"

Her question surprised him, stilled his motion, and he turned to look at her. She was gnawing on her bottom lip. Spike leaned in to her, replaced her teeth with his own, and kissed her til she was breathless. "Don't have to, kitten," he said, when they came up for air. "If you don't want me to."

She looked up at him then with eyes gone dark with lust. Her pupils were blown, the green of her irises nearly swallowed up. "It feels different—without one, right? Better?"

Spike nodded.

"That's what I want," she whispered.

He nodded again and captured her lips in a fierce kiss. He planted a knee on the bed, between her thighs, and urged her backwards across the mattress. He covered her in kisses, each inch of heated flesh his tapestry. Her skin pebbled behind his touch as he dragged his fingers across her abdomen. She was so open to him, so responsive, and suddenly Spike couldn't wait one second longer. He pushed his hips into the cradle of her thighs, and the belled head of his penis brushed against her sensitive clit.

She was so hot and wet, he thought he would combust. He slipped between her folds and nudged his tip against her opening. Where a moment before he'd been wound up, nearly beyond reason, to be touching her, to be inside her—now he couldn't go slow enough. He wanted to savor this moment; Buffy panted below him, her arms twined around his neck, as he slipped the barest inch into her tight channel, and then edged back out.

"Spike!" Her voice echoed from his bare bedroom walls. Her heels dug into his buttocks and urged him forward.

He resisted her just enough to make it last. Each centimeter was a battle of wills between them. Spike grasped her face between his hands and stared straight into her eyes as he sunk another inch into her. Her rapid exhalations gusted across his lips as she stared back at him. Finally she relaxed in his embrace, stopped forcing her sharp knees into his hips and her sharper heels into his arse. He braced his elbows on either side of her rib cage, curled his fingers around her neck in an echo of her hold on him, and captured her lips once more as he shifted his hips flush against hers.

Buffy's head flew back once he was fully seated inside of her. She clenched her cunt muscles around him so tightly he nearly went off in that first instant. It was only by sheer force of will that he held on until she relaxed around him. He felt he could write a sonnet to her, to the heat of her body and the way he fit so perfectly inside her. He panted into her neck for a second before he felt himself together enough to look at her.

"I can … I can _feel_ you. I mean—"

Spike smirked at her expression, her earnest wide eyes. "Told you you'd like it." He swiveled his hips then, feeling smug and in control once more. He could feel what it was made her gasp so: a soft, spongy spot deep inside her. He could practically see how each touch vibrated through her. She clamped her knees against his hips like a vice and held him in place.

"There, there, there," she chanted, eyes squeezed tight shut and her hands in claws around his shoulders.

He obliged; as he stroked,he pressed on _there, there, there_, and then she stopped chanting, held her breath, clenched against him and around him so tight that he knew he had no choice but to come along with her, and so he did.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note<strong>:<strong>** I could not have written this chapter without the incredible support of Minx DeLovely, Puddinhead, and Tennyoelf. Minx and I played a little game as I got comfortable with writing a sex scene. I wrote what I wanted, but instead of any 'naughty' words, I inserted the 'Smurf'. Minx went through and replaced them with the appropriate non-Smurfy terms, and voila, I got over my nerves! After the first section of this, I graduated to all the dirty words on my own. So, yeah, go me?

In case you're wondering about Spike's piercing, it's called an Apadravya (sometimes a HAPPYdravya). Google it, because I can't paste a link in here. :)


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